Presumably, Adobe is hoping that getting all the other smart phone manufacturers on board will pressure Apple to adopt Flash. But Apple is notoriously stubborn and, I believe, will hold out. The iPhone may not account for the largest number of smartphone sales, but it does account for the biggest share of mobile web usage. If you're a mobile web developer, this announcement does nothing to make Flash a viable development platform for the mobile web. This is why, for example, so many web sites still only work well with IE6.
What's more, Apple has made is abundantly clear that they do not consider Flash a first class citizen on the Mac. Apple excised every Flash animation from its website years ago. Personally, I believe this is motivated in large part by the historically low quality and inattention Adobe has paid to Flash on the Mac.
And finally, Apple has always had a tendency toward the not-invented-here syndrome. It's clear that Apple despises being dependent on others' products. (Is Blu-Ray really a "bag of hurt", or does Apple prefer selling movies in the iTunes Store that play on any Apple device?) Being the control freaks that they are, it is unlikely Apple would ever cede control over such an important part of the iPhone experience to a third party.
Flash sucks in many ways, but HTML5 is a long ways away, and in the meantime there are few alternatives.
Apple should implement Flash on the iPhone as soon as possible.
Battery life, annoying ads, and so forth would be non-issues as long as Apple had a setting to turn Flash off...ideally it could be fully off, fully on, or toggle for specific websites. Another option is for Flash only to load when an embedded SWF is actually clicked on. If this were the case, those of you complaining about Flash wouldn't be affected by it at all.
However for some of us, we need Flash to access specific content that is only available in Flash. And while I'll support the argument that developers *should* provide iPhone compatible alternatives to Flash, the fact of the matter is that many don't, so if Apple can't make everyone come to them, they need to provide the access to those that won't play along.
This is a lot like the MMS argument. It's easy to say that MMS sucks and just use email, but when you received an MMS, it sucked that the iPhone didn't deal with it properly.
I have been doing web development and design for a living for the past 10 years now, on a mac, using all the same tools everyone else does, PHP, XML, XHTML, CSS, JS, AJAX and AS. I personally think Flash has come a long way in recent years and that AS3 was a significant step forward for them. I don't have near as many problems accomplishing what I want to with Flash as I used to, and frankly there are times where the fact that it is proprietary is actually helpful because I can assume a certain amount of cross platform performance that I can't always get from complicated CSS, XML and JS.
Seriously, if you believe that ALL flash does is produce web banners and youtube you obviously aren't in the web development business at all. The fact of the matter is banner ads were annoying well before flash. Remember animated .gifs? Furthermore, while there is no shortage of annoying flash web content, the truth is there is plenty of flash content that people DO want to see. video game sites, movie sites, children's games, all of these make A LOT of money and have a HUGE consumer audience. An Audience that WILL buy a phone that has flash.
Some of you seem to think that every consumer out there is just like you, and you fail to realize that whether you liek flash or not, many consumers do. I can tell you from personal experience working on completely add related flash sites that these sites see enormous hits, trust me I have seen the analytics for this type of content and they are being visited by key demographics that advertisers will pay to reach.
Maybe promising advancements in HTML 5, JS or CSS will eventually remove the need for FLash, I don't know. Currently, HTML5 and CSS3 do not. I have more hope for JS2. I do know that for most of us who develop web sites it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I already know all of these tools and will continue to use the one that works the best for the job. The typical site I build these days uses a bit of everything and that includes flash.
The bottom line here is, there is a use for flash, and there is flash content people want to see, and there will be for AT LEAST 5 more years. So the need to display flash content isn't going anywhere soon, and consumers WILL notice if they cant view the content they want on one platform and can on another. And they WILL buy the product that lets them view the content they want.
Obviously you will take what I am saying however you want, but this is my real world experience working in web and what I have seen to be true. For what it's worth I personally believe that Apple will add flash when the time comes and they are forced to do so in order to stay viable, and this entire debate will be a non-issue. I also believe that those of you who are saying you will get rid of your iPhone when that happens are idiots. Of course you wont. If you did, you wouldn't have a smart phone at all. Because they will all have flash.
On my 2.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo iMac 24 with 4 gig RAM-- Snow Leopard and all updates.
I did not have any Safari windows, with Flash, currently open (though several YouTube windows had been used, but were now closed).
I got the following (and I can duplicate it with ease):
Notice that second line! Once I force quit the Flash plugin task it was like giving a constipated person an enema.
On the Mac, Flash stands for "Rich, Reach, and Retch".
My kids will. playhousedisney.com, pbskids.com, etc, are all Flash. The iPhone has to start supporting it or they will start to fail at their core competency, which is merging in with people's technological lifestyle. If iPhoneOS 4.0 doesn't support it I suspect the platform will start to stagnate.
This is incorrect, if the iPhone does not support Flash, it will be Flash development that will stagnate.
Yea, you're right, I guess it's easier, by far, to click on a video rather than a button.....NOT! I stand by my picky remark.
Er, what? It actually is easier. It treats the video as a big honking button, which, by virtue of being bigger, is a whole lot easier to hit. Very similar argument to the debate of menu bars attached to individual windows (Windows) vs. a single menu bar that occupies the entire top edge of the screen (Mac OS). The Mac's menu bar is a bigger target, especially vertically, making it dead easy to hit compared to a Windows menu bar.
That said, that usability debate doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the merits of using Flash. All anyone (say, Apple with WebKit/Safari) would have to do is add code to their browser so that HTML5 video objects displayed on a page can be clicked anywhere in the video area to play/pause them, and boom. Usability issue solved. (If they do it.)
Fair point but sites such as playhousedisney.com, pbskids.com will bend to better technologies eventually.
It's really in your and your kids best interest that Flash stays off the iPhone you know.
Likewise, kids will grow eventually and those sites will be irrelevant by the time they dump Flash (in this case). As we can't freeze kids growing until we have non-Flash Play House etc., only other option, unfortunately, is using different device. Shame.
I'm all for Apple pushing HTML5, but until it becomes mainstream and actually does replace Flash, I'd like to have Flash on my iPhone, thanks. Maybe with simple ON/OFF switch in iPhone Settings, but I really want to have an option to use it if I need it.
In all his wisdom, Steve doesn't know better what I need.
Flash development tends to attract programmers who didn't have the attention span to learn proper programming practices in college/university or people who want to pretend they know how to do programming so that they can make a bit more money without actually taking the time to actually learn how to do it properly. That's part of the reason why most Flash applications suck so bad.
Really, if people just used Flash for what it's best at -- easily creating simple videos out of mixed media sources and then exporting them to a format which is good for web viewing -- rather than trying to create complex games and other large applications which would be much better if developed in programming languages which were designed for those tasks by people who have proper training in how to structure large applications like that, we wouldn't be in this mess.
Unfortunately, people have just gotten used to a substandard computer experience (ala Windows and bargain basement PCs), and so they don't even notice that Flash apps have horrible usability, non-standard user interfaces, leak memory, cause your computer to bog to a crawl and/or crash your web browser, etc, etc. It just blends in with how everything else looks and feels on their computer. And now, because those people are in the majority, they are demanding the same craptacular experience be replicated everywhere.
I'm sorry if I refuse to accept that experience, and I'm glad Apple hasn't either. I prefer to support proper software craftsmanship, usability, and design. In a world where people are starting to demand better quality food products and better designed, fuel-efficient automobiles, maybe people should also take a look at their computers and demand the same level of quality?
I think perhaps someone needs to launch a technology TV channel which promotes technology quality awareness (via people who are passionate and knowledgeable about it) the same way that FoodTV promotes food quality awareness via chefs who are passionate about good food.
LOL....you my friend are an idiot....I develop firmware for DSPs and microcontrollers in C and Assembler and the GUIs are developed in either C++ or C#. I'm fluent in multiple object-oriented languages. I say this not to boast but merely to post a qualified opinion on your uneducated rant.
I use Flash to control hardware via the raw binary-socket exposed in the API for Los Alamos National Labs for quick prototypes. Flash can serve as a virtual UML for future applications (You've probably seen pictures of the Labs in your picture books). Flash is an interesting and unique platform. AS3 is an object-oriented language that allows for direct control of timeline based animations packaged as objects. The environment exposes both graphical and code-based management of resources concurrently. The possibilities are endless...its the best of both worlds. Adobe has accomplished a stellar achievement in an IDE and they continue to improve upon it.
So, before you criticize other developers, just know that there are Flash programmers out there who are much smarter than you or I doing amazing things with the platform..at the same time, the environment is easy enough for kids to play with programming and graphics which encourages them to continue to learn.
Get off your high-horse and educate yourself before posting idiotic comments.
Alkrantz, what evidence do you have that consumers will notice when flash content is missing and will therefore factor that into their device purchasing decision? I'm one of those so called normal customers/users with an iPhone you are talking about. I for one have not been impeded in ANY way by the lack of iPhone flash support in over three years of use! Stop guessing what you think other people are experiencing and trying to speak for them (and then try to use that as evidence for another point). There is enough BS floating around out there. We don't need more!
Desktop does not equal Mobile when it comes to browsing.
These sites are free to ignore that some 40% of Worldwide mobile web browsing is done on iPhones, but I think they will continue to use "a bit of everything" to reach that audience, don't you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by alkrantz
[LEFT][/LEFT]
Some of you seem to think that every consumer out there is just like you, and you fail to realize that whether you liek flash or not, many consumers do. I can tell you from personal experience working on completely add related flash sites that these sites see enormous hits, trust me I have seen the analytics for this type of content and they are being visited by key demographics that advertisers will pay to reach.
Maybe promising advancements in HTML 5, JS or CSS will eventually remove the need for FLash, I don't know. Currently, HTML5 and CSS3 do not. I have more hope for JS2. I do know that for most of us who develop web sites it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I already know all of these tools and will continue to use the one that works the best for the job. The typical site I build these days uses a bit of everything and that includes flash.
Alkrantz, what evidence do you have that consumers will notice when flash content is missing and will therefore factor that into their device purchasing decision? I'm one of those so called normal customers/users with an iPhone you are talking about. I for one have not been impeded in ANY way by the lack of iPhone flash support in over three years of use! Stop guessing what you think other people are experiencing and trying to speak for them (and then try to use that as evidence for another point). There is enough BS floating around out there. We don't need more!
I'm not entirely sure what your even talking about.....BUT
If you really think no one cares that flash content is missing from the iPhone, and are looking for evidence that people are in fact impeded by it not being there, than you need to reread this thread, because there are multiple people in it stating they wish flash was on the iPhone in order to have access to content they currently can not see. So I'm not really "guessing". Besides, claiming that you represent the "so called normal consumer" is in fact making the same presumption you claim that I am making.
Regardless, I dont care if you believe me or not. The greatest evidence for the idea that consumers will flock to the device which offers the features they desire is how well they sell, and on that point time will tell.
I am simply saying that there are users who care about flash and I am predicting that those users will buy phones that support flash when they have the chance. Can I prove it? Well no, considering smart phones with flash don't currently exist it would be impossible to prove. But I cant prove that WWII genocide happened to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei either, that doesn't mean it isn't true.
Flash would kill the battery and iPhone has a YouTube app. I would have said you were right when the iPhone came out, but after owning two of them I now see this argument as dead-wrong. YouTube has become the internet standard, and on the web wherever there is a YouTube video the iPhone OS can play it. Around 1/3 of the internet use YouTube everyday, we don't need no stinking Flash.
This reminded me to ask how is the iPhone playing YT flash videos? YT supports other file format uploads so somehow the iPhone is converting them?
This reminded me to ask how is the iPhone playing YT flash videos? YT supports other file format uploads so somehow the iPhone is converting them?
Google are the ones doing the conversion. Everything uploaded to YouTube is initially available as Flash video; meanwhile, YouTube's machines convert it to H.264 behind the scenes. Once that's done, the H.264 version becomes available to any device that wants it, such as the iPhone. Flash isn't involved at all on the iPhone's end. It's a resource-intensive operation, but Google has computing horsepower oozing out their pores, so it hardly matters.
Google are the ones doing the conversion. Everything uploaded to YouTube is initially available as Flash video; meanwhile, YouTube's machines convert it to H.264 behind the scenes. Once that's done, the H.264 version becomes available to any device that wants it, such as the iPhone. Flash isn't involved at all on the iPhone's end. It's a resource-intensive operation, but Google has computing horsepower oozing out their pores, so it hardly matters.
So why is YT using Flash then when it can use something that doesn't require people to have Flash?
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
On my Mac I have ClickToFlash installed with it set up to load QuickTime X as the player on YouTube. This uses considerably less processing power.
Woah I want to try this because every time I visit YT my Macbook fans go like crazy. I wonder if there is something like this for Firefox.
EDIT: Darn. Unfortunately ClickToFlash is for Safari only. Deal breaker for me. Firefox is too important for me to start using Safari just for YT. One browser only thanks. Actually come to think of it since I've been using Firefox my Mac isn't as noisy. The world needs to let flash die.
Comments
What's more, Apple has made is abundantly clear that they do not consider Flash a first class citizen on the Mac. Apple excised every Flash animation from its website years ago. Personally, I believe this is motivated in large part by the historically low quality and inattention Adobe has paid to Flash on the Mac.
And finally, Apple has always had a tendency toward the not-invented-here syndrome. It's clear that Apple despises being dependent on others' products. (Is Blu-Ray really a "bag of hurt", or does Apple prefer selling movies in the iTunes Store that play on any Apple device?) Being the control freaks that they are, it is unlikely Apple would ever cede control over such an important part of the iPhone experience to a third party.
Apple should implement Flash on the iPhone as soon as possible.
Battery life, annoying ads, and so forth would be non-issues as long as Apple had a setting to turn Flash off...ideally it could be fully off, fully on, or toggle for specific websites. Another option is for Flash only to load when an embedded SWF is actually clicked on. If this were the case, those of you complaining about Flash wouldn't be affected by it at all.
However for some of us, we need Flash to access specific content that is only available in Flash. And while I'll support the argument that developers *should* provide iPhone compatible alternatives to Flash, the fact of the matter is that many don't, so if Apple can't make everyone come to them, they need to provide the access to those that won't play along.
This is a lot like the MMS argument. It's easy to say that MMS sucks and just use email, but when you received an MMS, it sucked that the iPhone didn't deal with it properly.
[LEFT][/LEFT]
How does it barely work? Works fine for me.
I have been doing web development and design for a living for the past 10 years now, on a mac, using all the same tools everyone else does, PHP, XML, XHTML, CSS, JS, AJAX and AS. I personally think Flash has come a long way in recent years and that AS3 was a significant step forward for them. I don't have near as many problems accomplishing what I want to with Flash as I used to, and frankly there are times where the fact that it is proprietary is actually helpful because I can assume a certain amount of cross platform performance that I can't always get from complicated CSS, XML and JS.
Seriously, if you believe that ALL flash does is produce web banners and youtube you obviously aren't in the web development business at all. The fact of the matter is banner ads were annoying well before flash. Remember animated .gifs? Furthermore, while there is no shortage of annoying flash web content, the truth is there is plenty of flash content that people DO want to see. video game sites, movie sites, children's games, all of these make A LOT of money and have a HUGE consumer audience. An Audience that WILL buy a phone that has flash.
Some of you seem to think that every consumer out there is just like you, and you fail to realize that whether you liek flash or not, many consumers do. I can tell you from personal experience working on completely add related flash sites that these sites see enormous hits, trust me I have seen the analytics for this type of content and they are being visited by key demographics that advertisers will pay to reach.
Maybe promising advancements in HTML 5, JS or CSS will eventually remove the need for FLash, I don't know. Currently, HTML5 and CSS3 do not. I have more hope for JS2. I do know that for most of us who develop web sites it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I already know all of these tools and will continue to use the one that works the best for the job. The typical site I build these days uses a bit of everything and that includes flash.
The bottom line here is, there is a use for flash, and there is flash content people want to see, and there will be for AT LEAST 5 more years. So the need to display flash content isn't going anywhere soon, and consumers WILL notice if they cant view the content they want on one platform and can on another. And they WILL buy the product that lets them view the content they want.
Obviously you will take what I am saying however you want, but this is my real world experience working in web and what I have seen to be true. For what it's worth I personally believe that Apple will add flash when the time comes and they are forced to do so in order to stay viable, and this entire debate will be a non-issue. I also believe that those of you who are saying you will get rid of your iPhone when that happens are idiots. Of course you wont. If you did, you wouldn't have a smart phone at all. Because they will all have flash.
On my 2.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo iMac 24 with 4 gig RAM-- Snow Leopard and all updates.
I did not have any Safari windows, with Flash, currently open (though several YouTube windows had been used, but were now closed).
I got the following (and I can duplicate it with ease):
Notice that second line! Once I force quit the Flash plugin task it was like giving a constipated person an enema.
On the Mac, Flash stands for "Rich, Reach, and Retch".
*
My kids will. playhousedisney.com, pbskids.com, etc, are all Flash. The iPhone has to start supporting it or they will start to fail at their core competency, which is merging in with people's technological lifestyle. If iPhoneOS 4.0 doesn't support it I suspect the platform will start to stagnate.
This is incorrect, if the iPhone does not support Flash, it will be Flash development that will stagnate.
On my 2.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo iMac 24 with 4 gig RAM-- Sow Leopard and all updates.
I did not have any Safari windows, with Flash, currently open (though several YouTube windows had been used, but were now closed).
I got the following (and I can duplicate it with ease):
Notice that second line! Once I force quit the Flash plugin task it was like giving a constipated person an enema.
On the Mac, Flash stands for "Rich, Reach, and Retch".
*
Thank you for bring back sanity to this thread.
Bottom line: at this point, Flash needs the iPhone more than the iPhone needs Flash.
Finally, someone gets right to the heart of the matter.
No. Ease-of-use isn't being picky. For now, Flash is fundamentally more useable on YouTube.
Yea, you're right, I guess it's easier, by far, to click on a video rather than a button.....NOT! I stand by my picky remark.
Who is going to wake him up from his dream and does he have shares in MDM
LOL....did you see todays announcement for Flash CS5 at Adobe Max....you can export compliant iPhone apps natively.....who's dreaming now??
Yea, you're right, I guess it's easier, by far, to click on a video rather than a button.....NOT! I stand by my picky remark.
Er, what? It actually is easier. It treats the video as a big honking button, which, by virtue of being bigger, is a whole lot easier to hit. Very similar argument to the debate of menu bars attached to individual windows (Windows) vs. a single menu bar that occupies the entire top edge of the screen (Mac OS). The Mac's menu bar is a bigger target, especially vertically, making it dead easy to hit compared to a Windows menu bar.
That said, that usability debate doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the merits of using Flash. All anyone (say, Apple with WebKit/Safari) would have to do is add code to their browser so that HTML5 video objects displayed on a page can be clicked anywhere in the video area to play/pause them, and boom. Usability issue solved. (If they do it.)
Fair point but sites such as playhousedisney.com, pbskids.com will bend to better technologies eventually.
It's really in your and your kids best interest that Flash stays off the iPhone you know.
Likewise, kids will grow eventually and those sites will be irrelevant by the time they dump Flash (in this case). As we can't freeze kids growing until we have non-Flash Play House etc., only other option, unfortunately, is using different device. Shame.
I'm all for Apple pushing HTML5, but until it becomes mainstream and actually does replace Flash, I'd like to have Flash on my iPhone, thanks. Maybe with simple ON/OFF switch in iPhone Settings, but I really want to have an option to use it if I need it.
In all his wisdom, Steve doesn't know better what I need.
Flash development tends to attract programmers who didn't have the attention span to learn proper programming practices in college/university or people who want to pretend they know how to do programming so that they can make a bit more money without actually taking the time to actually learn how to do it properly. That's part of the reason why most Flash applications suck so bad.
Really, if people just used Flash for what it's best at -- easily creating simple videos out of mixed media sources and then exporting them to a format which is good for web viewing -- rather than trying to create complex games and other large applications which would be much better if developed in programming languages which were designed for those tasks by people who have proper training in how to structure large applications like that, we wouldn't be in this mess.
Unfortunately, people have just gotten used to a substandard computer experience (ala Windows and bargain basement PCs), and so they don't even notice that Flash apps have horrible usability, non-standard user interfaces, leak memory, cause your computer to bog to a crawl and/or crash your web browser, etc, etc. It just blends in with how everything else looks and feels on their computer. And now, because those people are in the majority, they are demanding the same craptacular experience be replicated everywhere.
I'm sorry if I refuse to accept that experience, and I'm glad Apple hasn't either. I prefer to support proper software craftsmanship, usability, and design. In a world where people are starting to demand better quality food products and better designed, fuel-efficient automobiles, maybe people should also take a look at their computers and demand the same level of quality?
I think perhaps someone needs to launch a technology TV channel which promotes technology quality awareness (via people who are passionate and knowledgeable about it) the same way that FoodTV promotes food quality awareness via chefs who are passionate about good food.
LOL....you my friend are an idiot....I develop firmware for DSPs and microcontrollers in C and Assembler and the GUIs are developed in either C++ or C#. I'm fluent in multiple object-oriented languages. I say this not to boast but merely to post a qualified opinion on your uneducated rant.
I use Flash to control hardware via the raw binary-socket exposed in the API for Los Alamos National Labs for quick prototypes. Flash can serve as a virtual UML for future applications (You've probably seen pictures of the Labs in your picture books). Flash is an interesting and unique platform. AS3 is an object-oriented language that allows for direct control of timeline based animations packaged as objects. The environment exposes both graphical and code-based management of resources concurrently. The possibilities are endless...its the best of both worlds. Adobe has accomplished a stellar achievement in an IDE and they continue to improve upon it.
So, before you criticize other developers, just know that there are Flash programmers out there who are much smarter than you or I doing amazing things with the platform..at the same time, the environment is easy enough for kids to play with programming and graphics which encourages them to continue to learn.
Get off your high-horse and educate yourself before posting idiotic comments.
These sites are free to ignore that some 40% of Worldwide mobile web browsing is done on iPhones, but I think they will continue to use "a bit of everything" to reach that audience, don't you?
[LEFT][/LEFT]
Some of you seem to think that every consumer out there is just like you, and you fail to realize that whether you liek flash or not, many consumers do. I can tell you from personal experience working on completely add related flash sites that these sites see enormous hits, trust me I have seen the analytics for this type of content and they are being visited by key demographics that advertisers will pay to reach.
Maybe promising advancements in HTML 5, JS or CSS will eventually remove the need for FLash, I don't know. Currently, HTML5 and CSS3 do not. I have more hope for JS2. I do know that for most of us who develop web sites it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I already know all of these tools and will continue to use the one that works the best for the job. The typical site I build these days uses a bit of everything and that includes flash.
Yea, you're right, I guess it's easier, by far, to click on a video rather than a button.....NOT! I stand by my picky remark.
Stop being so picky then.
Alkrantz, what evidence do you have that consumers will notice when flash content is missing and will therefore factor that into their device purchasing decision? I'm one of those so called normal customers/users with an iPhone you are talking about. I for one have not been impeded in ANY way by the lack of iPhone flash support in over three years of use! Stop guessing what you think other people are experiencing and trying to speak for them (and then try to use that as evidence for another point). There is enough BS floating around out there. We don't need more!
I'm not entirely sure what your even talking about.....BUT
If you really think no one cares that flash content is missing from the iPhone, and are looking for evidence that people are in fact impeded by it not being there, than you need to reread this thread, because there are multiple people in it stating they wish flash was on the iPhone in order to have access to content they currently can not see. So I'm not really "guessing". Besides, claiming that you represent the "so called normal consumer" is in fact making the same presumption you claim that I am making.
Regardless, I dont care if you believe me or not. The greatest evidence for the idea that consumers will flock to the device which offers the features they desire is how well they sell, and on that point time will tell.
I am simply saying that there are users who care about flash and I am predicting that those users will buy phones that support flash when they have the chance. Can I prove it? Well no, considering smart phones with flash don't currently exist it would be impossible to prove. But I cant prove that WWII genocide happened to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei either, that doesn't mean it isn't true.
Flash would kill the battery and iPhone has a YouTube app. I would have said you were right when the iPhone came out, but after owning two of them I now see this argument as dead-wrong. YouTube has become the internet standard, and on the web wherever there is a YouTube video the iPhone OS can play it. Around 1/3 of the internet use YouTube everyday, we don't need no stinking Flash.
This reminded me to ask how is the iPhone playing YT flash videos? YT supports other file format uploads so somehow the iPhone is converting them?
This reminded me to ask how is the iPhone playing YT flash videos? YT supports other file format uploads so somehow the iPhone is converting them?
Google are the ones doing the conversion. Everything uploaded to YouTube is initially available as Flash video; meanwhile, YouTube's machines convert it to H.264 behind the scenes. Once that's done, the H.264 version becomes available to any device that wants it, such as the iPhone. Flash isn't involved at all on the iPhone's end. It's a resource-intensive operation, but Google has computing horsepower oozing out their pores, so it hardly matters.
This reminded me to ask how is the iPhone playing YT flash videos? YT supports other file format uploads so somehow the iPhone is converting them?
No conversion. YouTube started using H.264 a few years ago. Flash can play the H.264 codec. You an chexk Wikipedia tonsee when that wa added to Flash.
On my Mac I have ClickToFlash installed with it set up to load QuickTime X as the player on YouTube. This uses considerably less processing power.
Google are the ones doing the conversion. Everything uploaded to YouTube is initially available as Flash video; meanwhile, YouTube's machines convert it to H.264 behind the scenes. Once that's done, the H.264 version becomes available to any device that wants it, such as the iPhone. Flash isn't involved at all on the iPhone's end. It's a resource-intensive operation, but Google has computing horsepower oozing out their pores, so it hardly matters.
So why is YT using Flash then when it can use something that doesn't require people to have Flash?
On my Mac I have ClickToFlash installed with it set up to load QuickTime X as the player on YouTube. This uses considerably less processing power.
Woah I want to try this because every time I visit YT my Macbook fans go like crazy. I wonder if there is something like this for Firefox.
EDIT: Darn. Unfortunately ClickToFlash is for Safari only. Deal breaker for me. Firefox is too important for me to start using Safari just for YT. One browser only thanks. Actually come to think of it since I've been using Firefox my Mac isn't as noisy. The world needs to let flash die.
.