Time Warner, NBC Universal delay iPad support in preference to Flash - Page 4

You don't have to develop for iPhone, but, if you do, and you use Apple's tools or HTML5, vs. Flash, you are in control of your destiny because there is nothing between you and exploiting all of the features of the platform. With Flash, you have what Adobe gives you access to, and no more. Now, in which case are you more in control of your own destiny?

And no one is forcing you to use iAd. It's an option on iPhone OS, but there are other options. So, this part of your critique is just simply N/A.

And, let's face it, developers who target multiple platforms by using cross platform tools, at most produce one good implementation, if that. If you actually care about your software, and your destiny, you develop natively for each platform. Lazy software development is bad software development, and you can't get around the fact that the biggest part of the problem is that cross platform tools control what you can do in a way that using native tools would not.

Well, it still looks like you are saying I exaggerated, otherwise, why is my post quoted when your reply has nothing to do with my post other than that we both speak of exaggeration?

Maybe you need to learn how to write?

If I was reading it correctly he was talking about Apple not the developer. Apple doesn't want its own platform hijacked and stifled by another company and the limits of their development tools. This happened before with the Macintosh and it was a nightmare for Apple, they don't want that to happen with the iPhone.

No, I was talking about Apple, developers, and content publishers: the entire chain. Developers and content publishers either control their own destinies by using native/HTML5 tools, or they allow 3rd parties to control their destinies by using cross platform tools. And this doesn't just apply to targeting iPhone OS users, it applies to all platforms.

perhaps, now just a thought, I was talking about the whole back forth reporting of the new flash player. A lot of people posting things as FACT, when they're nothing but opinions, reports, and conjecture.

Sometimes when someone quotes you, they're responding to the content, not you personally. It's a crazy notion I know.

I would have to agree then, that doesn't make much sense.

Software developers don't control native app development of any platform. Nor do they control HTML5 or third party development tools. They don't directly control any of it.

developers don't -care-. They will use what makes the most sense both from a development perspective, and monetary. (both are very related...)

> Apple's negotiations with certain big media firms to support modern, iPad-compatible web standards

Do you not see the irony of this opening statement?

While the rest of the world accesses the real internet; apple wants us to access some controlled version that their crippled devices can access. The world is much smarter than that. We have evolved past the point of some bureaucracy telling us what information should be accessible and what should not. THis is not a more modern version of the internet! This is a controlled, crippled backward version of the internet. Apple really expects the world to go re-design most of the web apps out there so they will run on the crippled IPAD? ridiculous.

Steve Jobs is loosing credibility as he turns Apple into a gadget company that wants the internet to adapt to the Apple gadgets limited functionality.

The fact that few recognize the lunacy of the opening sentence of this "article" indicates the Apple brainwashing is working.

"So this is how freedom ends; with a few brainwashed people applauding Steve Jobs".

>>gets beer and popcorn...

This is about control, content and revenue. Its about executives that think control over the channel is more important than selling content (yesteryear's thinking).

NBC has always had a problem with Apple's control and pricing of their materials.

Does anyone recall about 2 years ago when NBC pulled their content from iTunes and started their own website to sell? They were back in Apple's arms less than 12 months later.

Ah, well, I guess you just need to learn how to use the forum. There's a button at the bottom of the comments on any page labeled "Post Reply" that allows you to comment without replying to any specific post.

No, but they control the implementation of their own software, what features it has, it's behavior and appearance, how well it feels like part of the platform. When you use cross platform tools, someone else controls that for you.

but I was replying to what you posted. Is this not quite obvious? I think you need to calm down.

Exactly. Claiming their "vast library" as an impediment is ludicrous on the face of it. As you say, there aren't any Swiss craftsmen poring over each video frame. The larger the library, the lower the per-unit cost.

NBC execs aren't exactly the sharpest bunch.

I think you need to stop playing childish games.

Oh, I'm sure that's it. Jobs is Emperor Palpatine; that's his motivation.

Adobe could have avoided all this by writing halfway-decent code for OS X at some point during the decade. How hard could it be; they are a software company, after all. If there is hubris involved in this saga, it certainly belongs to Adobe in expecting to get along with their half-assed implementation because their product was the de-facto standard. By refusing to do what is basically their friggin' job, they put Apple in an untenable situation.

If you want to accuse Jobs for being a control freak, that may be valid criticism. From my perspective, standing firm on a good user experience is a positive, not a negative. I've been reading anti-apple tirades since the first iPod. Techno-geeks always quick to point out some device or specification that's "better" or has "been on the market for 3 months already, for chrissakes". They fail to take the 3 steps back that are required to see that most consumers do not want to deal with the hocus-pocus and headaches that come along with all of these "better than Apple" bits and pieces. In this respect, the Apple vs. PC distinction is the same as it ever was.

True. But there's a difference.

GOOD developers learn to use multiple tools and are able to choose the best tool for a job.

LOUSY and/or LAZY developers only know one tool and insist on doing everything with that one tool - no matter how bad the result.


That must be it. He has so much control over html so he would undoubtedly prefer that.

ha ha ha, yeah right buddy. Calm down, no one's hatin Apple, it's all gonna be ok.

Holy crap, I think you might be gettin it now. I've only said this multiple times...

If you agree that developers should use the right tools for the right job. Why do you feel that Flash absolutely have to be on mobile devices?

I love comments that lack proper research to verify their stated facts... http://www.android.com/market/#app=c...be.flashplayer (since deep linking doesn't work on Google's Android Market website, you'll have to click on Top Free, then select tools in the combo box and scroll down a few lines). Yeah, sure, it's a beta. But it's publicly available, and it proves that it can work. There are well over 100 applications in the iPhone App Store that were created using Adobe's packager for iPhone, which combines Flash Player code with an Actionscript > LLVM transcoder, proving that Flash Player could run on Apple iDevices, if Apple wanted it to.

Hardware acceleration of H.264 decoding in the OS X version of Flash Player is currently in public beta on Adobe Labs. Why did it take them so long to get there? Because Apple wasn't providing access to hardware decoding of video. Try it and you'll see the performance difference. All that software rendering of video is pretty processor intensive, as ALL software renderers tend to be.

Finally, for those of you who are repeating Apple's rhetoric of Flash being a "dead technology," keep in mind that all of the innovation that you're seeing in HTML5 happened in Flash Player first. Do you think Adobe will rest on their laurels and leave the Flash Player feature set where it is? They're going to continue to drive innovation on the web, as they've been doing for the past 11 years, by providing a platform and tooling for creating cutting-edge web content. Advertising agencies and major media outlets use cutting-edge technology to differentiate their offerings from those of their competitors. Is this possible to do a tiny percentage of what you can do with Flash CS5 or the Flex Framework with HTML5/CSS/Javascript? Yes. Are there tools available to help you do that? Not yet. And if they're anything like the tools I've seen from other "Flash-killer" technologies, they'll be bloated, unintuitive and way behind Flash Professional's feature set. In fact, the only tool with half-way decent HTML5 support that I'm aware of is Dreamweaver CS5 with the HTML5 Pack from Adobe Labs.

love the way you framed the question.

Not having flash on mobile devices removes the ability to use the correct tool -if- flash were needed to fulfill a requirement.

they don't care for facts. They simply hate flash, and that's pretty much where the debate starts, and ends.

Yes, it can technically work if use the most basic pass/fail grading system and losely define 'work'. On that note, I can also get Photoshop running on a netbook but that doesn't mean it's a viable option.

It's still in Beta and it's still only for Android v2.2 which itself hasn't officially been released except to devs and then it's only for the Nexus One, which is most likely the worst selling Android phone of 2010.

I find it hard to wrap my head around the defense of such a poorly executed and convoluted release cycle so not remembering what part of what what software release was taken from private to semi-private to public Beta and then to final release gets tiresome. On that same note, I have to look up Intel processor specs from time to time due to their odd naming convention and that's consdierably easier than the multi-teired fiasco that is Android.


Is it also Apple's fault that Flash for Android still isn't HW accelerated in mid 2010?
Is it also Apple's fault that Flash for Android still isn't out of Beta in mid 2010?
is it also Apple's fault that Flash for Android still isn't available for every other mobile device and available for several years now?

The demos clearly show Adobe has finally gotten off their collective asses and realized they drop the ball on the mobile front, but it's a little too late and Flash for Android is still very, very weak and will not a popular option among the average user. Even if Adobe had Flash 10.1 for the iPhone that was as good as it is for the Nexus One despite the Nexus One being considerably more powerful than the 3GS' HW, it still couldn't be used because it would do nothing but lessen the user experience. iPhone OS devices, Android OS devices and plethora of other devices creeping up to PC unit numbers have been doing fine for years without Flash so it's silly to expect a shitty implementation to be some sort of saviour.


1) On mobiles it has nearly 0% marketshare. How many Nexus Ones currently have it installed compared to the number of Android phones, much less all smartphones on the market?

2) Flash isn't going away anytime soon. There are aspects of Flash that will be losing marketshare, like internet video streaming, but Flash will last a very long time. Even Macs ship with Flash.

3) Adobe has been resting on their laurels, hence the situation they are now in in mid 2010 with no non-Beta version of Flash for all smartphones that is a viable competitor to more efficient options, like HTML5 video streaming and dedicated apps.

4) It took Rome 1000 years to fall but the evidence of it's crumbling was well known much earlier. It's possible that Adobe can fix this, but scurrying to place Band-Aids on Flash isn't going to do it. Adobe needs to realize that they aren't in the "Flash" business but in the "multimedia" business.

With the mobile market growing exponentially every quarter. The usage of mobile devices on the internet growing exponentially. What requirement is need that can only be fulfilled by Flash?


I don't hate Flash. I recognize that Flash is a technology built for a different time. It was not designed to run well on mobile devices. The only reason Adobe is attempting to force Flash on to mobile is because they don't want to loose their control of the web.

Nothing is really a need. Hell we don't need the GUI OSs we have really, surely Lynx, the text browser is all we need! Why do I need all this graphical eye candy flyin around in OS X? OS 7 was all we needed really.

Yeah, that's in debug mode BTW, it's bluffing Hulu by sending a false signature.
Andriod just looks to me in still developer mode of working and has yet to understand the meaning of the term called "general user".

It took 3 years for adobe to reach beta, no one knows when it will reach RC & so on. Will it take that much time to convert those videos into h.264 format, they waited for 3 years for Adobe to do something instead of starting the process 3 years ago on weekends only

1) Flash 10.1 still in Beta for Android which was known well before the iPhone was officially announced.

2) Flash 10.1 still in Beta for the "open" Android OS despite Adobe claiming that they had working on the iPhone 3 years ago.

3) Flash 10.1 still doesn't have HW Acceleration on the "open" Android OS despite it taking a week for Adobe to add it to Mac OS X after Apple allowed access to it.

4) Flash 10.1 still only for Android v2.2 which has not been released to all Nexus One phones.

5) Flash 10.1 still has <1% marketshare for Android phones and likely Nexus Ones phones because of this despite it being mid-2010.

6) Flash 10.1 video still stutters even sites with low quality bitstreams without being fullscreen.

7) Flash 10.1 has made great strides but it's still very far from being a viable product since Adobe took the lazy route for so very long that Apple will have nothing to worry about in the market for a long time to come.

It's sad, really.

oh yeah! Convert those videos to H.264 so we don't have to use flash!

Oh wait. flash has been playin H.264 for a few years now?

hmmm.

Forum dumps are always a chuckle to watch. But then, there's always a few that need to 'be smart'.

It's called flash lite. But apple wasn't interested. But this is ancient history.


Ah more misinformation. It -does- have hardware acceleration for android 2.2


Betas of new software on a new platform tend to have little marketshare. This means, zero.


Depends on how biased you are. I've seen html5 embedded videos stutter on mobiles. But I've not seen many problems on either. Have you personally used it? I'm guessing, no.


so says you, someone on a forum. Who also seemed to post some misinformation.

So much for me giving Adobe a pass. Thanks.

3) Flash 10.1 is still stutters with low-bitrate, windowed video streams despite having HW acceleration.

didn't stutter at all for me. Yet.

Though I am aware video does stutter, as I said, I've seen stuttering in several players, html5 included.

As it's been shown numerous times, one can shoot video showing video in any technology, stuttering. It will come down to what the majorities experience, and opinion on the player that will decide flash player's future, not a handful of videos on some attention clickthrough seeking website.

If it doesn't work out, I suppose there's always the shitload of cash converting millions of flash websites to enjoy.

I love how you are now putting blame on the source content, not the player, as the problem. Awesome¡ Let's see, I can play a 720p video from YouTube without stuttering on the 1GHz Cortex-A8 iPad, I can play that same file on my Mac in Flash or via HTML5's video tag in 720p without stuttering. Upload a video of an Android phone doing the same in Flash 10.1. Please, vindicate yourself.

i never put the blame on the source content at all. See this is what happened the last time. You read something in my post that clearly isn't there.

Once again, one can shoot a video, of any device, playing a video that stutters. I'm not talking about source content!

I recall the peecee bigots using the same kind of debate tactics when macs were not where they were now. It was frustrating. I'm going to guess everyone of those shrieking peecee king of the castle guys never expected apple to pull off what they have. Now I cannot predict what the outcome of this will be. As I've said numerous times, I take a lot of what the sensationalist sites post with a bit of grain of salt. -Including- those showing things to work famously.

Proof will be in the pudding. Time will tell. Until then, I see a lot of blog reading experts.

Perhaps I should have been born in your "show me" state.

Interesting....

"How to make Steve Jobs your mortal enemy: Smokescreen, a 175KB, 8,000-line JavaScript-based Flash player written by Chris Smoak at RevShock, a mobile ad startup, and to be open-sourced 'in the near future.' From Simon's blog: 'It runs entirely in the browser, reads in SWF binaries, unzips them (in native JS), extracts images and embedded audio, and turns them into base64 encoded data: URIs, then stitches the vector graphics back together as animated SVG. ... Smokescreen even implements its own ActionScript bytecode interpreter.' Badass!"

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/0...%28Slashdot%29 I disagree that is will make Jobs/Apple angry. If this becomes viable it will further chip away at Flash while securing open standards for the future of the web.

not sure how this would "chip away" at flash.

People seem to forget, adobe doesn't make money of the player, it's the IDE they care about.

Let's see, if JS can be made to run SWF as native browser code with WebGL more efficiently than Flash then Flash takes a backs seat, most notably on mobiles.

I never mentioned anything about this chipping away at Adobe's profit centers. Seriously, some days the reading comprehension on this site is abysmal!

You've still failed to say how "flash takes a backseat". Perhaps there's a better way to run the files. But of course if you're following things, you'd know the work being done on this already.

This is new news???

Really? Smokescreen is news old?

Dude, all this kind of work is -not- news.The idea that flash can run not in the flash player is nothing new at all. It also helps to know something about the platform, the history, the massive overhaul of it's programming language which is surprisingly identical to javascript...

When one delves in a little further, beyond all this I HATE FLASH CAUSE A BLOG SAID SO nonsense, there's more to this story.

To say things will change, is like saying computers will faster and more capable.