FTC believed to be investigating Apple's anti-Flash stance - Page 3

More random personal attacks in the absence of substance from the man who insists that "gross profit" is not a form of profit.

You just don't know when to quit....

From what we know, the complaint does seem kind of lame, but then I suspect that Adobe has information that we don't, or the FTC probably would not be paying attention to them.


Puleeze! If you don't understand that the U.S. and every other civilized country on the planet has had competition laws on the books for a century or more, then let me suggest that you refrain from commenting in this thread.

The government doesn't care about Flash. All they care about is the complaint they've apparently received. If you call your local police department and complain about your neighbor's dog barking all night, they aren't going to decide over the phone whether the dog is barking or if you just hate your neighbor. If they think the complaint might be valid, they'll look into it and decide which is the case. That's all the FTC is doing now.

If that's "flash" then why is there still a fuss about this?

(that was a rhetorical question - your statment is rediculous since the Gordon.js is hardly "flash" - hence we are all here still talking about it)


I'm not so sure I want to use programs written by non-experts. I'm sure a user focused company like Apple is even less sure that this argument is worthy of consideration. Not all discrimination is bad!


Approval by Apple for an App is not a blanket approval forever. Apple's not de-compiling or reading through source code. It's also clear that Apple was overwhelmed, and is still probably pretty overwhelmed by the success of the App Store. There are plenty of examples of Apple going back and pulling programs for a multitude of reasons (not that I always agree with their reasons).

And before anyone whines about how unfair Apple is, Google has done it too and I thought I saw where Palm has with the WebOS but I couldn't find the reference I was looking for so take it for what you want.


If flash is such a crappy environment that poor practices by flash programmers can lock up my browser on a routine basis then.... it's a flash problem! It's so woven into many web sites that it needs to be a heck of a lot more robust than it is now! If you have "non-experts" creating flash apps, then flash had better be able to keep these "non-expert" flash authors from shooting themselves in the foot, and by proxy shooting my computer as well.

At least with Safari 5, I can kill flash in Activity Monitor, regain control of my browser and resume work.


They may sell lots of pro applications, but that doesn't equate caring about Mac users. And I don't even really care if they "care" about Mac users - I just want them to take pride in their product. That there is such a performance difference in Flash between Mac OSX and Windows should be extremely embarrassing for them. You can't tell me that if Adobe took this seriously that they couldn't go to Apple and that Apple wouldn't work with them. The fact is, Adobe isn't overly concerned with the Mac. They were content to coast. The whole 64 bit carbon thing should have been a non-issue. The writing was on the wall - if they were really serious about the Mac, they would have already been moving to Cocoa, instead of waiting until the absolute last minute when Apple basically forced their hand. Plenty of other developers made the leap to Cocoa without having to have Apple basically poke them in the butt with an electric cattle prod. Instead Adobe was plainly content and intent on "milking" the Mac. I think Apple saw this, along with all the hassle of propping up Carbon 64 and they said "enough - were killing it". It was the smart thing to do. It was the ballsy thing to do as to this day people are still painting Apple as the debil for it. Much like with Adobe and their half-a$$ed flash iOS app compiler, they only have themselves to blame - Apple was quite clear about the future of Mac OSX and the iOS - none of it was a secret. Snow Leopard wouldn't have happened if 64bit carbon was still lurching around like the zombie that won't die, and for all the jokes about "thousands of fart apps" what the heck do you think the ease of allowing "non-experts" to write thousands of poorly coded and un-optomized iOS apps would do for the iOS? I think Apple was exactly correct in their reasoning for blocking flash and Adobe's flash to app converter. Apple is about the user experience, and the user experience would have sucked with those tools.

If you want a platform with an uneven and inconsistent user experience, Android has your back! Knock yourself out. Have fun with unexplained battery drain, warm handsets, wildly variable battery life, uneven performance... Just remember the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot means you occasionally will.

I think Adobe got a double one-two punch from the iPhone that they didn't anticipate. First of all, they didn't expect Apple to literally take over the advanced mobile market overnight. And second they probably didn't expect the double digit growth in the Mac caused by first the iPod and now the iPhone "halo" effect.

They gambled they could milk the Mac and coast along on Windows. They gambled wrong. Oh well - man up and take care of business - but enough with the "life is so unfair". Please...

Listen, I want Flash to be an option on iOS devices also (so long as it doesn't crash... it seems as though it's been crashing more on my Mac since Adobe and Apple starting going at it).

But here's the thing... as a "creative" I think that businesses should get to decide the product they put out and then people decide whether to buy or not. That seems right to me. If Steve Jobs decides he doesn't want Flash on his devices, I can choose to go elsewhere. I don't think that anyone should be able to tell the inventor of something what they should invent.

Flash is not a God-given right (if I believed in such things). Not having Flash was one of the negatives I put on my list when deciding whether to buy an iPhone or iPad or not. The pro side of the column won out and I ended up buying one of each.

If I'm a painter, then no one should be able to force me to use the colour blue. It's a perfectly fine colour and there are others using it, but here are my paintings and you won't find blue on them. Makes sense to me.

Why should Adobe spend thousands of dollars (or more) and countless R&D hours to come up with Flash for iOS that, even if it worked perfectly, would be denied from the app store (and it would, we know it)

Flash works great on my Chrome browser (or firefox) on my computer, great on my Droid, and decently on my macbook (though it is def the slowest of the three) The issue isn't that it's buggy, it's that in order to run efficiently, it needs access to some API's that apple doesn't like releasing.

The best advertising is that which actually is seen.

With that simple metric, be it on the computer or on mobile devices (where's flash for other mobile devices??) flash is a bag of fail.

That's whats crazy about these stories, we don't know what the FTC is doing.

Taking the complaint could be "investigating". Anti-Apple people probably have a different vision of "investigating" than those who could give a flip about Flash. Since all we have is speculation and imagination.... well, you have this thread

I also asked a question, but when I do I need to settle down? LOL!

I don't think it is a fair question to ask someone for metrics to support their opinion when you do not provide any for your side that is all.

You do realize that Apple and Adobe have a history, right?
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles..._struggle.html

I would normally agree with your views on Apple's stance, but in this one case, I'll go out and say Jobs probably takes Apple's view of Adobe personally. Hell, I would too if I were Jobs.

To reach a small percentage of viewers? Every viewer can benefit from an HTML5 website (as long as they use a decent browser). Nobody's accomodating Apple. Safari (and other Webkit browser) happens to be ahead of the curve. If website coders want to use the latest code and have it nicely deprecate in other browsers, they can. At the moment, rounded corners and things can be targeted at both Webkit and Mozilla browsers. What's the difference between assuming your visitors are using a decent browser, and wondering if your half your audience has Click to Flash installed, or no Flash plugin at all? What's nice, is that if you spend any time developing for the future, as time goes on (maybe by the time you finish developing a new site) more and more browsers will be complying with more of the standards, and more people will start to see the benefits and extra work as time goes on.

Flash support is not going to get better. Period. Adobe has not improved it in 10 years, and they still haven't made it work for mobile devices, which is a moving target. Not only is mobile tech advancing very quickly, more and more people are relying on it for more of their online experience. Adobe are hopelessly behind already. Why work to give old methods life support when you could get ahead? And Apple's small percentage of mobile devices is doing a majority of the web browsing.

Why spend money? To do something the right way -- using web standards. Would you let someone video your daughter's wedding using a VHS camera? A little Flash here and there may be OK for a presentation, for now. Flash worked pretty well for interactive CD-ROMs about 15 years ago, but complete Flash websites and apps? Come on.

Why change your site "when it works the exact same"? Why improve anything "when you don't have to"? Why not wait until the last possible moment to be caught with your trousers down and let the competition pass you by? That's like saying, "Why move a small business from Windows to Mac? You can still do the exact same things on Windows. Who cares about efficiency and productivity and happy workers, it's got a screen and a keyboard doesn't it?" A bit drastic, but what about at least using a standard network in your business and then giving the staff the choice of a Mac or PC? That's better than continuing to use some kind of archaic and proprietary network that only supports PCs.

Why build out a cable infrastructure in my town? After all, phone lines are just fine. So what if cable has the potential to move us forward and to be faster in the future. Phone lines are fine -- most people have an analog phone and we are doing fine with ADSL for internet. 99.99 percent of homes have a phone line already installed. Why invest in optical cable? Yeah, you can do multiple phone numbers and TV and internet and everything over a cable, but what is that really delivering to us right now? Just the same thing you can get via regular ADSL or by adding an extra phone line.

How about websites created totally out of tables using FrontPage? Would you advise them to not upgrade their websites any time soon? How about websites that have no dynamic database or CMS behind them? No reason to use modern methods, right -- Visitors can still interact with these sites; hey, at least they keep IE6 alive, eh? Accommodating Apple? Why do we keep accommodating MS when they can't ever seem to support any web standards at all? Many developers and large companies (like Google) have declared they are not going to jump through the hoops any longer to accommodate IE6; if an IE6 user can't see elements on a page properly, too bad. Fortunately, MS is moving past IE6 by developing new browsers. However, MS hasn't really effectively cut it off in favor of their new browsers -- they don't give users the message that they need to upgrade and MS don't make it easy and obvious to upgrade. Adobe, too, needs to move on. Both companies are trying to hang onto a proprietary and non-standard web that is "not the real or full internet".

Anyway, in the meantime there are free javascript scripts all over the web that have comparable and better effects than Flash. Right now. Download some off of www.css-tricks.com or something. And these affect multiple individual objects on the screen that are tagged for the effect, not just one whole region of one page, for which the whole underlying Flash file has to be recomposed or reworked to add something new.

I think it's obviously buggy. And not just on Mac OSX.


...claims Adobe.

I would be more inclined to believe them if they didn't have a history of screwing every other platform except for Windows.

What API's in Linux don't they have that is causing flash on Linux to suck so bad? This is from 2008: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3320 if you google, opinions aren't much different.

I'm sure that's Apple's fault too?

Adobe is learning the lesson of the parable of the boy who cried wolf....

Then click on the link, where the Flash spokesperson explained what went wrong:
http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/2...ng-on-android/

I'll quote some of it for you:

I'm not justifying the FTC's investigation, but if you're going to post something, post the rest of it too.

And what APIs would that be? Access to sound? Video hardware? Input devices, like mouse, keyboard, or webcam? Flash has perfect access to all of that just fine.

The entire point of Flash is lowest-common-denominator. All the Flash executable needs to do on any system is be able to draw to the screen, spit out sound, and take input. It doesn't use any more system libraries beyond those three basics.

The only time I really have issues with Flash in my browser (chrome) is in facebook chat, which is a pile of fail anyway. Both Chrome and Firefox are configured to shut down a crashed plugin (and tell you when it failed) rather than crash the browser, so if flash crashes, It's very

The API thing is documented. Engadget ran quite a few posts on it, and they showed how improved the flash experience became once apple opened up some of those API's. (I think the release was for macbook pro's)

I don't use linux so I can't speak for it. But part of the issue there could be how many distro's of linux there are, the fact that it isn't a popular end user OS (so it's not primary concern for a company ahead of windows, or even OSx). Having Linux programs run well on linux across distro's is a chore enough for my friends who use the platform. I can't see a plugin being any easier.

but I didn't express a side!!

I didn't say I had experience in both AS3 and Objective c, and one "was shite" compared to the other.

I didn't say he was wrong; I invited him to share his rationale (which he still hasn't)

Exactly right. This, to the well studied eye, is exactly what the anti-trust laws were and are for. Not for consumer protection, but rather for competitor protection and punitive attacks against the more successful competitors in the market.

You're been snarky, but are likely more right than you know.



And? So?

Hardware accelerated Video is the main specific API

Apple finally allowed 3rd party programs access to it ONLY to decode h.264 files, and only on the newest of devices with specific GPU's. They updated the permissions in late march.


This means if the video is coded in anything other than h.264, or if it's an older device, flash still can't hardware accelerate video.

You would be right except for the fact that they have an app store that has only one purpose, to put third party software on their platform. Disallowing all apps based on the tool they were written with seems a bit... um... anti-compedative. If Apple thought these apps would be so poor, why don't they just review them individually like every other app?

No, it's a bit prudent. Code produced by such tools is never going to be optimized. It's always "least common denominator". Real optimization is a deliberate act. It's not something you can just get out of a compiler. Yes, some compilers can make slight improvements here and there, but you are always going to get the maximum benefit from human involvement.

And if that's the case, then what's the point of an abstraction tool like what Adobe was trying to peddle?


Why should they waste their time? People are already hopping up and down about approval times on the App Store - great, let's allow a flood of poorly written apps from people who can't even commit enough to the platform to learn the native tools.

Yeah, those are the kinds of developers I would be excited to waste my time for!


Seriously - is it really this hard to comprehend?

What about all the other times when flash isn't playing video that it locks my machine up?

One straw man doesn't equate a universal truth...

They shouldn't work on Flash for iOS. They should let Flash die and develop HTML5 authoring tools for their suites.
But "Thousands of dollars (or more) and countless R&D hours"? Apparently Adobe had a casual team of about three people on the Mac version of the player for all those years that it has never performed well, didn't listen to them when they warned about preparing for the iPhone, and then laid off even these three people about the time the iPhone came out. And Adobe is developing for how many mobile platforms now? I don't think they will keep up. Mobile is advancing rapidly, and its becoming ever more important.

Flash, or Flash Lite, works great on your phone? How are all those items that rely on hover controls? How's your battery life?

It might not be so "buggy", but it is inefficient. Anyway, Apple has released the necessary APIs -- but Adobe is not satisfied with doing it according to the guidelines the way that all developers are required to do it. The content could be run more efficiently through the QT player; this would allow Apple to keep Flash content a little more sandboxed and QT would give it the hooks necessary. Flash is a security risk when it gets the access that they want.

You're correct. Apple's approval process is so horrible that they need to find excuses for not letting people submit apps. But before the new EULA, there were, and still probably are, apps in the store that were APPROVED by Apple that were written with Adobe's cross-compiling tool.

If the quality of the apps are such a HUGE concern, just let them go through the approval process. Or are you and Apple too scared that the apps will actually turn out to be good?

I was talking about the amount of time it would take to optimize flash for iOS devices. It's not something so simple as making the code work in xcode, it has to be optimized. And adobe is developing HTML5 toolkits for their software alongside their flash ones. They actually made a REALLY big deal about it at Google I/O. Sometimes it's useful getting non-apple news from a site other than AI.

I am running full flash 10.1 (beta3)

Most on hover work like drop down menus. It's not perfect, but then again, flash for mobile (10.1) was just released. The number of finger friendly flash sites is going up significantly.

Battery life is pretty much exactly what it is playing any other kind of media content over a wireless connection. The "battery drain" happens with HTML5 or with Flash or anything active I am doing in my browser. Play a tv clip in flash, or play it using HTML5, it's the same battery usage statistics.

Apple JUST released the api's in march, and only for computers with the following GPU's: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M and GeForce GT 330M
and ONLY for h.264 coded videos.

So your computer is a new one (if apple) using a: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M GPU?

If not, apple hasn't released the api's for your device. They only released the API's relating to h.264 playback for THOSE devices. So when your computer is doing non-video content, it can't use the GPU, aka it has to rely fully on the CPU. Again, the ONLY api's released when it came to the GPU was for low level access to accelerate h.264 playback.

I'm not posting a straw man. Your example, by definition, wouldn't be GPU accelerated.

LOL! Wittiest reply thus far.

There's a bounty, but the amount isn't known? Who is funding this bounty? Isn't this just hearsay?

You should want your tax dollars defending private interests.

once big companies start saying what you can and cannot do, then your very own private interests are next. who will stand up for you then?

I'm fine with it. and Apple needs to loosen up on Flash. I want it and so does everybody else. flash is not an old technology. it is one that was ahead of its time.

Well then, the next thing you know, Apple will be telling you that the "program" or website you are visiting was coded in HTML, CSS, and PHP by "non-experts," so it won't work on the next Mac or iDevice. Forget visiting your church's website, your fave non-profit, your own DIY, etc. Only a handful and websites by so called "legit" experts will be accessible. Sounds like too much power to me. best crush this idea before it's too late.

To those wringing their hands at Apple's "anti-competitive" policy: please explain to me how getting the government to require support for your technology promotes competition? Hint: it's no longer competition if the government is calling the shots!

It's real simple. Two big companies butted heads, the market picked a winner, and now the loser wants the cops to overrule the market.

This would be a less serious concern if we didn't have such frequent demonstrations that our government is more than willing to overrule its citizens whenever the mood strikes it.

It would be fun and surreal if the FTC investigates Apples failure to anchor their products to a technology that doesnt even exist: Flash suitable for mobile devices! (In both performance and battery life.)

Wow, you really think Apple is that powerful/evil? Or put differently, should Apple think, "oh gosh, how is Adobe going to feel about this decision? Oh, I'd better fret about it." Uh no. Apple looks out for Apple. Call that evil, call it selfish, call it another day in the tech business. Every firm does the same. If that surprises you about Apple, then you just spent the last 34 years on a turnip truck

As for the timing, don't read conspiracy into anything that can be adequately explained by a slow, last minute response to the treat of another development platform usurping/wrapping the official SDKs and tool chain behind a layer that Apple doesn't control. Why would Apple let that happen? Why would I, as a consumer want every ActionScript kiddie flooding the App Store with crummy Flash apps that might not even be properly adapted for the platform?

And Apple somehow doesn't qualify as one of those?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y7XJI4NN7k

And flash on android doesn't consume any more battery than HTML5 or other active content.

.....

Which you say on great authority, no doubt.


And so the sun rises in the east. These discussions should not have to begin with a theoretical debate about whether antitrust laws exist -- but somehow they always do.

Wow, just wow. OK, theory time: the government protects the public's interests. (Now I know that doesn't always work that way, god knows I could write long paragraphs about cases where it doesn't, but this ain't the right forum). Simply put, the government should ideally exist to balance the needs of the individual (or company) against the needs of society at large. That's why the only valid complaints the FTC should give 2 cents about are when the public good is harmed by what any members of that society (companies in this case) are doing.

Now Adobe files a complaint against Apple. Adobe and Apple's individual interests conflict. Why should my tax money be used to "investigate" that, unless Adobe puts an argument on the table about the public good being at stake? I can't see any way to turn a private dispute between two companies into one where the public's interest is at stake. You might try to argue that preventing Adobe's Flash from running on iOS hurts "the public," but Apple is nowhere near a monopoly in terms of phone market share, and Apple's customers weren't duped into buying an iPhone on the promise of Flash--they knew what they were buying.

Call me a Libertarian, but if Adobe wants to pay their own lawyers to sue Apple, I'm happy to let the two fight it out in civil court with their own money.

Adobe should open their Flash runtime to the Open Source Community like how Apple released Webkit in 2005(a fork from KDE's KHTML rendering engine) to the community which is now backed by developers of Google, Nokia, RIM, Palm and many others.

There's a difference between defending private interests and using a government stick to settle private corporate disputes when the market can settle that.


That's your opinion. Are you going to rail against TiVo owners too? There's nothing that says ads have to be flash-based. The concept of ads isn't the bad part, I start blocking them when they start promoting objectionable products, quack remedies, those stupid teeth whitening photos or detract from the alleged site content.


Which ones have source code contributed by Adobe?

They did.