Adobe manager puts partial blame on Apple for mobile Flash failure - Page 2

Flash? Steve Who? Its all old news now.

Flash is obnoxious. Get rid of it ASAP!

Having such a life-form in my surroundings, I have a pretty good idea where these numbers come from. The guy re-installs rooted Android versions at least 10 times a week and fills his spare time with posting Apple-hating bullshit on Gizmodo, Engadget and other hangouts for complete retards.

While I do consider that acceptable (should certainly be covered by some nth amendment
to something), I have no idea why these creatures always consider their drivel as being representative of normal people.

I agree, smart to not letting anyone comment on his blog.

J.

Some say blame. I say credit.

What basis? Adobe admitted for the most part SJ was right and without Flash on moblie, it pretty much guarantees it will become irrelevant to for desktop web browsing too, as every website will develop for HTML5 first to insure they can be accessed everywhere.

Flash will be a desktop application niche in 18 months and I bet Adobe see a major drop off in developer interest overall.

Just a matter of time now.

I knew as soon as I saw the title you'd ask. If this manager represents the entire company and not just the Flash division, it's clear they saw this as more of a competitive issue than timing. I'd say this guy who's been working with Flash for 12-13 years is looking for a scapegoat/smokescreen.

He rightfully places only partial blame on Apple though and this shows when he cites reason for the failure. As JeffDM noted, this business model requires a high level of installations to be successful and Android doesn't always come with it preinstalled, you have to get it from the Android Market. Also, this Flash manager is clearly admitting that the resources to deploy on so many devices were beyond them and the performance requirements were too high. Add in the fact that mobile platforms don't have to support legacy browsers and the move was inevitable.

Despite Android's marketshare, it's not clear how many of those devices fall below a certain performance threshold so I'd go so far as to say it was just as much the fault of Android's business model. Apple could have given Flash a leg up by offering a stable platform with predictable hardware performance but that still doesn't make up for the failing of the other 50% of the market and Adobe for failing to make it run properly. Flash can't play video smoothly on anything less than a 1GHz CPU when they don't have GPU acceleration - the requirement should be half that.

If the company as a whole believes that Apple's development of Canvas and their push towards open standards has been a significant and competitive reason for Flash failing, I am being naive in thinking they are smarter than that.

Your welcome!

Those "activations" are not moblie contract activations. They are simply Goggle "activations".

Base on web usage it's clear many Android users are simply moving up from Feature phones to Smartphones and using them much in the same way they did their feature phone. Overseas outside of westernized countries pre-pay is the standard and may of these people don't use data. or have credit cards to buy apps.

In the end an Android users doesn't always equal an iPhone user where it counts. This is what gets lost in the "activations" non-sense. The best market for developers is still clearly iOS - a paying market.

not sure why this thread bugs me so.but Flash's demise is Adobe's fault, no one else's. No one here has mentioned that Microsoft quickly followed suit in their new mobile platform, jettisoning flash..not that anyone WOULD notice that .yet

To say that Apple's lack of support killed your product is callowMOBILE killed your product.

but agree with all those who say SJ did us a favor, taking a stand. Give Apple credit for being the first to say out loud what I bet many engineers at many companies had been saying privately for years. Flash is a parasite, it had its time, move on.

Flash has always worked just fine on an iMac -it's laptop user that only complain about their batteries and heat. And besides students are the heaviest laptop users- cant afford to dine anyways.

This was pretty much common sense for anyone not caught in Adobe's Flash-think. How did a company that was barely able to get Flash to work well on a single "desktop" platform ever think it was going to get it to work well on multiple mobile platforms, with even more demanding requirements, in addition to desktops? It was just never going to happen. Obviously, Apple/SJ realized this years ago, and Adobe finally, grudgingly, has now too.

There, I fixed that for you.

I guess you need to have it spelled out for you. It worked reasonably well on Windows. It did not work well on Mac OS X or Linux, it sucked on both of these platforms. So, 1 out of 3 desktop platforms, there were able to get reasonable performance. Given that, the idea that it would ever work well on even more mobile platforms, wasn't realistic. And, Adobe has now recognized that.

EDIT: And, I know a lot of people will say, "Yes, it worked well on Windows because Microsoft worked with Adobe to get it to work well on Windows." But, think about that for a minute. Why should an OS vendor need to "work with" -- i.e., customize their platform -- a browser plugin vendor to get the browser plugin to work well. The whole idea of that is ridiculous, and Microsofft having done it doesn't make it any less ridiculous. Should the OS vendor customize their platform for every software vendor to insure that the software vendor's software runs well, or should it be the responsibility of the software vendor to make sure their software runs well? I don't see how any rational person can think anything but the latter. There's nothing about Flash that somehow makes it an exception to this rule.

Tallest Skil your pic was hilarious. Good work. I was going to reply about Flash working on my Droid but screw it. That was really funny.

What gets me is the irony:

If you say HTML5 will do everything Flash will do,
and you say you hate what Flash does,
then what, exactly, are you saying?

Maybe I don't get it. "Kill Flash" seems to translate into "Kill banner ads," but there is nothing to stop HTML5 from building the exact same banner ads, and in fact, the "kill flash" people use this equivalence as an argument for ditching Flash.

Seems like one sect lynching another sect, while both holding firm to the same root religion. What am I missing?

If you were following the great Flash debate shortly after the iPad was released in 2010, you'll remember when Adobe paid for full page ads in newspapers around the US and saying sarcastically how they love Apple but not the way Apple limited people's choice. RIM chimed in about how your freedom of choice was limited by Apple because there was no flash in your browser. They made Apple to look like a dictator and as this Adobe manager said, the issue became very political.

But they were all blinded to the fact that from Apple's point of view this was purely a technology issue. As SJ mentioned at All Things D, his company bets on technology trends like people bet on race horses. Flash was an old horse on its way out while HTML5 was the new thoroughbred that Apple was going to bet on for the forseeable future. Flash became the Floppy drive that Apple got rid of with the original iMac.

It's too bad that stubborn minds taking the lead at Adobe, RIM and Android took this long to come pull their heads out of the sand.

You're missing the fact that the web no longer needs plugins.

iMac 24" Core 2 Duo

No Browser windows open with Flash running


"Flash has always worked just fine on an iMac" -- Really?

From what I gathered from that, he's basically saying that because Android is so fragmented and its hardware so varied, it took a great deal of resources to develop it. On top of that, the one handset that's basically homogenized and could keep development costs low, won't allow it to be installed. Therefore, it simply cost too much to develop Flash for Android and they're gonna drop it. That seems to be the gist of it, despite ongoing blah blah blah trying to diffuse the reasoning, pointing to additional things like application markets.

So, basically, Android's model is a failure for app developers because of the high cost of developing for handsets using various cpu/gpu, screen sizes, Android version, etc.. Are we starting to see cracks in Android's house of cards?

What the guy says in the article is actually much more moderate and articulate than the lousy headline would imply.

That actually should be Apple Insider's tagline.

This article is written about a blog written by Mike Chambers -- an Adobe Flash executive.

I had dealings with Mike back in the days when I was doing ColdFusion web development -- before and after Mike went to work for Adobe.

I always thought Mike was a talented, friendly, helpful straight-up guy.


So, I went and read his blog, user posts, and Mikes responses to those posts -- as well as linked blogs/posts/responses about other related, Adobe products: Flex, AIR, etc....


None of this came across as whining -- rather a sober, honest presentation of the facts as they exist.


My opinion of Mike has not changed: Mike is a talented, friendly, helpful straight-up guy.

He's just been given a bad portfolio -- and is trying to make the best of it...

...Without damaging the company, the products and the user community he represents.


Likely, that is what any of us would do if we were honest, and in the same position.

+100% Mike Chambers!

Probably because restaurants:

1. Don't need to change their web site often
2. Rely on style and presentation in order to increase perceived value.

When I see a blocked Flash element on a website, I think, "Ew, nope."

When I think about food, I shouldn't be thinking, "Ew."

When I think about patronizing a business, I should't be thinking, "Nope."

There might be a problem with their continuing use of Flash.

It's interesting what he says. In many ways they are confirmation that Steve Jobs made the right choice. My interpretation of what he says is that Flash essentially failed to keep up to the realities of a handheld device. Also, while not yet mature, HTML 5 and corresponding open standards kinda make Flash seem less relavent.

Adobe will have to work hard to keep Flash relavent on the desktop, since in many ways handheld devices are also impacting how content publishers approach the desktop.

I have always said that Flash should never be on a mobile device although I do support Flash on the desktop as an option for really unique presentations and applications. Similarly, you wouldn't want to order Steak tartare, Roast Suckling Pig or Peking Duck from a drive thru window either but that doesn't mean that a fine restaurant shouldn't be able to offer it.

This AI Article... This AI Author...

For a while I've suspected that Josh Ong is just another pseudonym used by DED -- mainly because there always seemed to be an agenda and a certain bias to the information presented... ...While not as blatant or "In your Face" as DED, it was always there...

With this article, the author included a chart. The style of the chart is a give-away -- I've never seen anyone but DED use a chart like this -- especially the arrows showing how different products/releases intertwine...

-50% Josh Ong (AKA DED)

Partly at fault? Change that to "Apple gets most of the CREDIT." That's right, Adobe, you're now feeling the wrath of Steve Jobs from beyond the grave. He knew that flash SUCKS and was not the animation/video platform of the future. And now, so do you.

And there in lies the problem. The animation and video platform of the future is unfortunately still in the future. It will be up to Adobe to produce the tools necessary to author multimedia elements in HTML5. So far we don't have a convenient way to do it except by tedious hard coding.

Hype.

Oh, gosh Adobe's just going to buy them, kill them, and integrate 1/100th of their capabilities into Dreamweaver, aren't they

You do remember they bought Dreamweaver and added quite a bit of functionality afterwards, right? I don't care who provides the tools, just figured that Adobe has the best chance to do it since they have the most resources.

Yes, you're right. And it became the bloated whore that we know and love today.


While I do believe that Adobe will eventually morph Flash into the exact same application but with it creating HTML5 stuff

it would be very nice to see more competition remaining in the WYSIWYG HTML5 field, as opposed to Adobe's usual plan of buying absolutely everyone doing anything and mushing them together.

What you don't get is that "Kill Flash" isn't because of banner ads at all. It's because it's a lousy piece of technology. Security problems. Overheating problems. Crashing problems. Battery life problems.

I don't think anyone believes that banner ads will go away after Flash is in its grave. But they do hope that the security, overheating, crashing, and battery life problems will go away.

I'm not sure which acquisitions you are referring to. Please don't go back to PageMaker and Freehand to make your point. They bought MacroMedia but that was because MM was way ahead of Adobe in web and animation stuff.

There is no reason to "Kill Flash" because there are good Flash and ad blockers freely available. The "Kill Flash" crowd are simply haters. If you want to kill something kill hate.

Regardless of the platform i was run on Flash was still the biggest access point for security issue and the most prone to crash according to browser markets. As webcode evolves we'll move farther and further away from Flash as a delivery method..

Nope, the biggest security threat is still opening email attachments.

There is no reason to kill Flash because it's ending its own life from too many years to being sedentary. They've made great effort to get back in the race but it's too little too late. Flash as a ubiquitous plug-in for all computing devices is over and the parentage of machines that will have Flash will continue to drop.

I don't disagree. Flash's days are numbered. All good things get abused, tarnished, and exploited. Flash still does what no other platform can do but the typical content you encounter sucks. Ads and spinning icons are hideous. I can remember when FM radio was pretty cool. Now it is unbearable. Same thing with Flash. People are always trying to blame the platform when actually the offensive part is the content.