RIM unveils 7-inch 'PlayBook' tablet set to launch in early 2011 - Page 11

I don't know the answers really to those questions. But it is a tough one, and bad developers will cause all sorts of problems.

I'd expect some pretty interesting html5/js/canvas etc etc monsters to take out my browser some time down the road. With luck, that hopefully won't be a serious problem. But I do recall all the horrible JS stuff in the 90s. Mouse followers blah blah.

Perhaps adobe putting out IDEs that enforce better garbage collection, memory management, I don't know.

Come to think of it, basically this tablet is going to be predominantly Flash-on-QNX. It's more risky the more I think of it.

The old skool Flash was where everything had to be running in an animation, and you poll for events every 1/25 of a second (eg. running 25 fps). As Groovetube mentions now it's more of something where there are listeners for events, you don't need the timeline running. But Flash player still has to be *listening* for events.

There are two forces at work. As Groovetube mentions, on the dev side, there is smart coding and so on. On the other side though, pre-10.1 as we know things are not very pretty no matter what the dev does. The problem is not so much the code but as soon as you start having animations, etc. the render engine starts to chew up CPU. I don't think listeners and idling is the issue as much as animation and sound.

Put all this on top of QNX and you've got an interesting but risky situation. Everyone is going to go nuts on the animation of apps because they can and because of current Flash habits. On top of that the PlayBook OS itself is supposed to be intensely animation heavy and especially, transparency-compositing-heavy. As Flash designers and devs know, once you have transparency, be prepared for some CPU nom nom nom. Throw in on-the-fly drop shadow, blur and other render effects on a per-element(symbol) basis. Mmm...

Basically what happened is Adobe and RIM got together based on their desire to stick it up Apple. RIM of course wants to be back in the limelight and prevent tablets and iPhones from invading their business domain. Adobe is pissed that a major, popular mobile OS almost completely locked them out. They want to get back on Flash on mobile in a big way, who knows how Froyo adoption and Flash-on-Froyo is doing. So Adobe goes to RIM, promises some very, very, very big things, they scheme, and voila. A Flash-driven, RIM developed iPad killer.

It will be good times to see how this plays out.

Adobe is smart, in terms of betting on both Android and RIM. But time will reveal the payout from the gamble.

I have dabbled in animation and compositing with FCP and Motion... everything from simple transitions, titles, tracking, rotoscoping, particle generation, morphing, tweening... could someone 'splain to me how you do some of these things without a timeline.


For purposes of this question, ignore the old, bad, legacy Flash and focus specifically on 10.1 or state-of-the-art Flash.

Let me make sure I understand.

1) Flash remains an interpreted language, correct?
2) Instead of being poll-driven, it is interrupt-driven (listeners)
3) when a listener is triggered, an "animation" runs
4) the animation is coded in ActionScript and must be interpreted
5) once interpreted the graphics generation is handled by a real-time render engine


Emphasis mine:

I understand the attractions/costs to use dynamic, real-time animation at the app level.

But, you are saying that the QNX/Flash hybrid OS is going to do animations at the system level.

Certainly that won't be ActionScript and interpreted then rendered-- rather some very tight code like CoreAnimation on iOS... right?



Here's a Flash from the past, ca 1994:


I re-watched the PlayBook video paying close attention to the animation.

I think that, now, I better understand-- they were showing off the OS's animation/presentation capability.

To be fair, Apple and Android Device mfgrs do this in their presos, to some extent -- but it is always in conjunction with a user...

The PlayBook video didn't show any user interaction, not even one finger -- Don't touch that touch screen!

Seriously, it was just one big [Flash] movie... more of a cartoon, actually.


Above, you said: "Put all this on top of QNX and you've got an interesting but risky situation."

It appears, at least for now, that RIM/Adobe have fallen victim to the "animation" temptress, and forgotten the user.

Will they be able to kick the habit?



Just for the record, I ran the PlayBook vid at 720P, full screen, on a 24" iMac 2.8 GHz, Core 2 Duo with 4 GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD2600 GPU. The Flash plugin spiked from about 12% CPU up to about 104% CPU for the duration

,

There will ALWAYS be good programmers and bad programmers.

Go and look at QNX CAR, the entire HMI is done with flash.

Apple rules

yes. it was a big day for RIM and they did make a good impression to many people.

with several people trying to discredit RIM, absolutely. i welcome the iPad, PlayBook and all other tablets to the marketplace; it's healthy for the consumer.

You can code it, obviously there's an internal timer, but you don't have to touch the timeline to generate x, y, alpha, etc. parameters for objects on the screen. That's as far as my understanding. Similar to how in HTML/CSS/Javascript you can create fade-ins and animation without an explicit timeline. Basically code is in loops, every xth of a second change a certain parameter, or, generate new movie clips on the fly (that's how you create pretty particles/movie clips programatically). If someone knows how this is now done in a better way, do share.


This was what I was bitching about in another thread. 10.1 was predominantly about GPU decoding of videos. Then now they're talking about 3D acceleration. All this does not fully address the issues you raised above. I still say IMO the real-time render engine is the most CPU intense part of Flash, in most cases where highly complex math is not being done.


Another poster mentioned above it will be more tightly integrated. Let's hope so. It will be the first time it is done for Flash at any significant scale.


I know you're kinda concerned about this, so am I. Basically it was a mock-up and teaser video that RIM just really needed to get out the door as a massive PR and Marketing stunt. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and see what eventuates. The whole video was probably composited in After Effects or maybe even a Discreet tool.


Well, this is what they think they can/ need to do to fight the iPad. Not many people actually "get" Apple. Sure stuff from Apple and the UI is cool and sexy, but it is rarely outright frivolous.


I think your GPU is not supported for 10.1 hardware decoding. You'll have to check the release notes. Yet another issue with 10.1. It really wasn't that superb of an update, it is no panacea.

Well, I look forward to the PlayBook. We need other companies to step up to the plate. Apple alone is not enough (in terms of quantity of units to meet people's needs) to bring us to this next level of computing, and certainly things like holographics somewhere down the line.

A good comment on that blog: "This is clearly FUD intended to try and prevent Blackberry folks from moving to iPad between now and Q1 2011, when this device is supposed to be out."

Bingo.

That said, I still look forward to what they come up with. If it fails, at least we'll have a laugh. If it doesn't, it will be interesting.

You can register for the SDK - I have. I'll let you know when it ships!