This study erects a beautiful strawman, and makes an art of knocking it down.
The problem was NEVER desktops (notice that Apple has NOT banned flash on the mac. In fact it performs best on the mac safari, apparently).
The question is the future of computing, i.e. mobile devices. Here the biggest issue is battery power, not CPU consumption. Of course, if you offload to the GPU, you will have lower CPU consumption. But you are still consuming more power (except, its the GPU now consuming some of that power)...
Where do you draw the line between what is part of the internet and what is adjacent?
Admittedly it's a nuanced point. But how about we start with Web standards? HTML, CSS, Javascript, whatever else you want to lump in there. Even H.264 for video and AAC for audio. These are published and widely implemented standards. Hell, you can even go all the way down to TCP/IP if you really want to, since that's the foundation on which all that other stuff is built.
Here's my thing: Flash is a document format, plus a piece of proprietary software for playing those documents back. It's just like Microsoft Word, as far as that narrow examination goes. You can find Microsoft Word documents on the Web, ready to be downloaded. Does that make Microsoft Word part of "the whole Internet?" Of course not. It's just a document format, and one you're not guaranteed to be able to work with.
Flash is the same way. It's included by default on a lot of computers, but it's not a standard. It's one company's product, that just happens to be popular for advertising and occasionally making really shitty, inaccessible, difficult-to-use, totally unnecessary Web sites.
If we declare that Flash is an integral part of "the Internet" (whatever we mean that to be), then why isn't Powerpoint? Powerpoint documents can be put up on Web sites and downloaded. Does that mean they're part of "the whole Internet?"
It just doesn't make any sense to me. If you're going to draw a line around part of the content that's out there and say "This is the core, these are the fundamental protocols and specifications," then you need at least some half-assed rationale for doing so. If you expand that circle to include Flash, why stop there? Why not include everything that can conceivably be posted to the Web?
Maybe I'm older than most people here; maybe I'm not, I dunno. But I vividly remember the days of the early 90s, when "browser plugins" were a thing. You had to have a RealAudio plugin, you had to have a Quicktime plugin (because it was a separate thing in those days), you had to have all these different plugins for handling different content types. Hell, Adobe even wanted people to have an Acrobat plugin just to read PDFs, if you can believe that! And eventually, you had to have a Shockwave plugin, then a Shockwave Flash plugin.
Those days are over. Flash is the only Internet plugin left (unless you count Silverlight, which is really just Flash with a paint job). And good riddance to them, because they were a pain.
Okay, how about this definition. If you don't wanna go with the whole "published and widely implemented standards" thing (which I freely admit is shaky at best), how about "The Internet is what your browser understands." If it has to be handled by a third-party plugin, it's not really a core part of the Internet. It's just another document format.
One, "less" is a comparative word. It means "not as much," and two, it doesn't imply that non-Flash content is scarce...
Three, App Store Apps should not even be included in your list... wtf?
Four, are you telling me that you never, ever peruse a website that requires flash? Ever? If not, then, fine. The iPhone is perfect for you.
You made some pretty royal assumptions on that one, John. 1) Android != Windows, 2) if the differences between iDevice efficiencies and non-iDevice efficiencies scale (which is unlikely considering battery life optimization is of primary concern in mobile devices), Android Flash absolutely could not be any worse than 50% more CPU intense, i.e. 66% of typical battery life.
Yeah, "Encoded" was not the correct terminology to use, but rather "packaged," or "presented" via flash.
If it is as easy as flipping a switch, why wouldn't every web site do it?
Fact is, video playback is not Flash's only trick. There is a lot of other flash-presented content that WOULD have to be re-"encoded" to work properly with HTML5.
Where do you draw the line between what is part of the internet and what is adjacent? Hell, my crappy Nokia 3100 could theoretically access "the whole internet," just in a terrible, text-only way. Just as rich text, images and CSS are now standards in mobile web browsing, so too is flash-style media presentation in desktop browsing. If I cannot view what is the predominant web multimedia platform on my iDevice, then I do not have the "full internet."
More internet than my Nokia 3100 and any other phone of its generation, that's for damn sure, but certainly not "full."
I think that's more than a bit of hyperbole...
Agreed that today's options are better... but that doesn't immediately change the fact that Flash is still being used A LOT.
Agreed here. Let the user decide!
What planet do you live on? Far less than 10% of world-wide consumer sales are Macs.
Uhh... it's exactly about picking battery life. Apple said so.
See above response to TomFoolery.
I don't like proprietary formats more than anyone else, but If the majority of the content is platform-entrenched, I'd bite it, and settle for that format.
By the way, speaking of proprietary formats, why doesn't Apple open up the App Store to all who wish to develop for the iPhone?
...Yeah, I went there. Apple is the prince of closed systems, second only to Microsoft.
-Clive
You don’t need Flash on the iDevices because there are alternative ways to get the content you want. That’s my point. Want to watch a video? QuickTime streams the H.264 video using hardware acceleration. Want to play a game? Get a free one from the App Store. Don’t want to go through the App Store for apps? Find a web app.
Here's my thing: Flash is a document format, plus a piece of proprietary software for playing those documents back. It's just like Microsoft Word, as far as that narrow examination goes. You can find Microsoft Word documents on the Web, ready to be downloaded. Does that make Microsoft Word part of "the whole Internet?" Of course not. It's just a document format, and one you're not guaranteed to be able to work with.
How about Acrobat? That format sucks more than Flash but Steve must be cool with it since it is on the iPhone. Or maybe it just doesn't pose as much of a threat to the App Store monopoly.
The publishers might have thought it was a pretty good format for their iPad content but apparently Steve doesn't think so. It's ePub for you, a format that has absolutely no traction whatsoever and currently the only authoring application for ePub is made by Adobe.
How much better is that? ePub is open source standards based so it must be better. However, after Apple reworks the format for DRM then how much of an open standard is that going to be? Not so much.
196% of the top 10 zillion web sites ALL use flash and it ALWAYS for really really really important stuff and not just super annoying web site ADs and porn-games like you might be thinking... In fact the entire backbone AND ribcage of the interweb is totally dependent on Flash and if you don't believe me just as Al Gore!
And most important... If Flash were to disappear Jesus would cry! Do you **really** want to be a party to THAT? I think not!
Baby Jesus or hippie Jesus?
Cause I feel like I could handle baby Jesus crying, kids cry all the time. Grown man crying, bit tougher. But to get rid of flash...
How about Acrobat? That format sucks more than Flash but Steve must be cool with it since it is on the iPhone. Or maybe it just doesn't pose as much of a threat to the App Store monopoly.
The publishers might have thought it was a pretty good format for their iPad content but apparently Steve doesn't think so. It's ePub for you, a format that has absolutely no traction whatsoever and currently the only authoring application for ePub is made by Adobe.
How much better is that? ePub is open source standards based so it must be better. However, after Apple reworks the format for DRM then how much of an open standard is that going to be? Not so much.
PDF is an open format, anyone can build their own viewer.
What are you talking about there are plenty of epub authoring software.
Here's my thing: Flash is a document format, plus a piece of proprietary software for playing those documents back. It's just like Microsoft Word, as far as that narrow examination goes. You can find Microsoft Word documents on the Web, ready to be downloaded. Does that make Microsoft Word part of "the whole Internet?" Of course not. It's just a document format, and one you're not guaranteed to be able to work with.
(...)
The thing is that I actually agree with you about the future of Flash and open standards. That doesn't make the problem disappear.
Speaking of MS Word (and all of Office, in fact) what is the primary format in which businesses type documents? Make Spreadsheets? Presentations? .doc, .xls, & .ppt. These are proprietary formats, yet are absolute necessities for businesses to be able to read, edit and share. While they are slowly being replaced by open formats, that doesn't make them any less important today.
If a company were to release a device aimed at business types, it damn well better be able to open .doc files! Likewise, if a company were to release a device aimed at browsing the "Full Internet," it better be able to read the most commonly used formats online, including SWF files...
That's my opinion, anyway...
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Originally Posted by CIM
You don?t need Flash on the iDevices because there are alternative ways to get the content you want. That?s my point. Want to watch a video? QuickTime streams the H.264 video using hardware acceleration. Want to play a game? Get a free one from the App Store. Don?t want to go through the App Store for apps? Find a web app.
That's call being compromised, and most consumers don't like that.
How about Acrobat? That format sucks more than Flash but Steve must be cool with it since it is on the iPhone. Or maybe it just doesn't pose as much of a threat to the App Store monopoly.
The publishers might have thought it was a pretty good format for their iPad content but apparently Steve doesn't think so. It's ePub for you, a format that has absolutely no traction whatsoever and currently the only authoring application for ePub is made by Adobe.
How much better is that? ePub is open source standards based so it must be better. However, after Apple reworks the format for DRM then how much of an open standard is that going to be? Not so much.
So many incorrect statements. In my best Jack Bauer voice: Who do you work for?!
I'm not sure where your ePub rant came from, but let me take this opportunity to correct you on ? well, basically everything you wrote, including a lot of your punctuation marks. Seriously, no offense, but it was a really bad comment you posted there.
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Originally Posted by mstone
That format sucks more than Flash?
Why do you say that? First of all, to the extent that it matters, PDF is also known by the name "ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008." That's right, it's an international standard which anybody is free to implement. It's not controlled by anyone.
Second, PDF is really the universal standard for document exchange these days. There are some features bolted on to it for things like forms, but they've never really been adopted on a large scale because alternatives were superior. But for passing documents around, PDF is really outstanding.
Not to mention the fact that PDF is the format on which the entire printing industry lives. Pick up any book or magazine printed in the past, oh let's be conservative and say five years. Somewhere out there, on some server someplace, is the PDF that was used to engrave the printing plates that made it.
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The publishers might have thought it was a pretty good format for their iPad content?
But they'd have been wrong. Read on.
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It's ePub for you, a format that has absolutely no traction whatsoever and currently the only authoring application for ePub is made by Adobe.
PDF and ePub are designed for different applications. PDF is for static content, which comes from its roots as a format for the printing industry. On the other hand, ePub is specifically designed for content that must reformat itself to fit whatever output device is in use. It's basically XHTML, but it has some extensions that make it specifically suitable for publishing printed matter for electronic reading devices.
ePub is also defined by a handful of international standards. Again, anybody is free to implement them.
Also, there are a number of applications that can output the ePub format; InDesign is just one of them. I don't work in that industry so I can't speak to any of them by name, but they're out there. Google around. What's more, pretty much the only electronic reading device that doesn't already support ePub right out of the box is the Kindle. The Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble's device are both based on ePub. Hell, you can even get ePub apps for your little Android thing, if you really want to.
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However, after Apple reworks the format for DRM then how much of an open standard is that going to be? Not so much.
Right, except DRM is one of the core features of the two-and-a-half-year-old ePub standard. No reworking was needed.
The problem was NEVER desktops (notice that Apple has NOT banned flash on the mac. In fact it performs best on the mac safari, apparently).
I don't think perform BEST on the the Mac not by a long shot (and every windows users seems to agree with me boasting how much better flash is on windows) AND while Flash may perform at subpar speeds on a Mac it only does so when it's not crashing or becomes unresponsive...
The ?less content? argument is stupid and false. There?s no lack of content on the iDevices. I can find all the web apps, h.264 videos, and App Store apps I could ever want.
I can't. As I've mentioned in other discussion, I'm researching on my new car and Nissan and Subaru NZ sites are dominantly Flash, thus completely useless without Flash support. Other car brands also use Flash to a certain degree... so in short, I can't do my research on my iPhone (nor could I on my hypothetical iPad).
Don't get me wrong - I still love my iPhone, but full Internet experience it is not.
I think one of the things that you hear a lot is that as soon as you click on a Flash element you hear the hard drive and the fans come on. That could be because you are running Click2Flash which is blocking the plugin. When you click it the plugin launches. This behavior is different if the plugin loads when the browser is launched without Click2Flash. In the later case you don't sense the ramp of launch on click, making it much less noticeable.
But with all the ads you have to run Click2Flash.
I think you're wrong on this, those Flash plugins are processor hogs.
I decided to install ClicktoFlash on my Macbook a fortnight ago to see if it made any difference. Before installing it I noticed that the fans in the Macbook were frequently on when using Safari. There were times when Safari would slow down until I had to quit and start the app again.
Now with ClicktoFlash I notice the fans don't come on until I activate a Flash plugin. I find Safari is noticeably more responsive.
The disadvantage is I've found some useful sites which make use of Flash, notably maps.google.co.uk and finance.google.com. The other sites are mainly travel sites.
What's odd is that I've accessed these sites on the Flash free iPhone with no reduction in info presented (well useful info), which hints that it's quite easy to do away with flash altogether.
It's disappointing that people can't see beyond Internet Explorer or Flash and infuriating some sites still stupidly proclaim Internet Explorer only, e.g. www.globalexpense.com.
I recollect Sir Tim Berners-Lee stating how he came up with http because different physicists had useful data on different incompatible machines and http would allow any machine to access any data.
I find it disgusting that Microsoft had used Internet Explorer in an attempt to subjugate and pervert that ideal.
The best solution is what will allow the widest range of devices access to the widest range of data. I thought one of the signs of good web design was to leave it to the device - be it mobile or desktop - to format and retrieve data according to screen size, bandwidth etc, again a move towards the intentions of the world wide web.
HTML5 is closer to that ideal than the proprietary Flash.
Ironically, Safari/Mac with Flash 10.1 (not HW accelerated) is almost as efficient as IE/Win with Flash 10.1 (HW accelerated). Safari uses 32.07% CPU, while IE uses 14.62*2 = 29.24% CPU.
(For those unfamiliar with both platforms, OS X measures CPU usage such that "one core = 100%", while Windows measure CPU usage such that "all available cores = 100%").
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Originally Posted by mstone
The article was not very clear on the procedure used with respect to that percentage issue.
On dual core for example Mac full CPU usage = 200% where full usage on Windows is 100%
So maybe my math is faulty or the data needs adjusting but it makes Flash look even less of a CPU hog.
This is not quite true. While Activity Monitor will measure 100 % per core in the list, if you go to the CPU tab, you'll see the total only measures to 100 %, regardless how many cores you have available (at least on 10.5 Leopard). The test methodology is very clear in where it takes it's data from.
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- I used the CPU Usage directly from Windows and subtracted the % idle from Activity Monitor from 100% to derive total CPU utilization on the Mac.
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Originally Posted by solipsism
They did back in 2006. It's called Core Animation.
Apparently it wasn't supported for content in Safari back in 2006 (despite that Core Animation was made available to the public with the release of 10.5, in late 2007), which makes your point moot. Core Animation obviously also does not support hardware accelerated decoding for AVC, or any video compression standard for that matter. I'm fairly sure hardware accelerating the actual drawing of video to the screen is in some of Apple's public APIs, but not decoding.
Right, except DRM is one of the core features of the two-and-a-half-year-old ePub standard. No reworking was needed.
I wasn't aware there was any description of DRM in the ePub spec. If you don't mind please direct me to the url so I can get the facts straight.
Edit: Actually that was was just a sarcastic remark. I am well aware of the DRM definitions in the ePub spec. DRM is allowed but is not specified in any detail as to how. Seriously, do think for a moment that a FairPlay Apple DRM ePub book will be easily read anywhere but on an Apple device?
My comments were in response to your post saying Flash being hard to work with document format and not part of the real Internet. Exactly like Acrobat which I have to work with everyday so I am very familiar with the inner workings of PDF standard which includes much more than static content and yes it is also part of the Internet. The SWF spec was opened by Adobe as well just not many people have decided to make readers for it. But it can be imported encrypted, decompiled and whatever you like. Doesn't make it more or less part of the Internet which is a totally stupid concept anyway.
If something can be sent from one computer to another across the Internet, it is part of the Internet. Not everything has to be read natively by your browser to technically be part of the Internet. Who came up with that definition of the Internet anyway? The Internet existed years before any browser was invented. Is email part of the Internet, it uses a specialize protocol and needs a dedicated client? Is FTP part of the Internet or is just HTML/CSS/JS because that is the side of the argument you are taking if you say that Flash is not part of the Internet. Flash is not part of iPad and iPhone, which is fine, but Flash is part of the Internet.
The disadvantage is I've found some useful sites which make use of Flash, notably maps.google.co.uk and finance.google.com. The other sites are mainly travel sites.
What's odd is that I've accessed these sites on the Flash free iPhone with no reduction in info presented (well useful info), which hints that it's quite easy to do away with flash altogether.
I don't think it is that easy to do away with Flash. Steve Jobs is the #1 shareholder of Disney and their sites (Disney.com, ABC.com, ESPN.com) have Flash video.
Flash is an internet bully. They push all other codes into the corner and destruct them as useless. Flash itself is old and it hasn't seen an update since Windows 97. HTML 5 may comparable in some ways but may be our future choice over Flash, for at least portables that is.
If all you're using Flash for is video playback, just use HTML5 or provide it as a fallback for Flashless browsers. HTML5 is already being finalized as a standard while Flash is just a proprietary plugin some people use.
The more interesting cases are all the online games that require Flash. Would they suck up all the iPhone battery life? Worse than native apps?
Seriously, do think for a moment that a FairPlay Apple DRM ePub book will be easily read anywhere but on an Apple device?
No, I don't. But I also don't think FairPlay-protected music was easy to listen to anywhere but on a Mac or an iPod, and that didn't stop iTunes from growing to become the dominant online music retailer before the protection began to be phased out.
I was going to say something similar about video content, but I honestly can't think of another online video content retailer. Netflix is a streaming subscription service, Hulu is a streaming ad-supported service ?*does anybody else even sell video content online the way iTunes does?
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Doesn't make it more or less part of the Internet which is a totally stupid concept anyway.
Now that I agree with! When Apple advertised the iPhone as being "the real Internet" it made sense because the alternative was the WAP ghetto. Safari on the iPhone was a full-on HTML browser, not a cruddy little WAP browser, so the distinction was sensible. But HP's "the real Internet" gag is nitpicky at best, and downright meaningless at worst. Totally on the same page with you there.
Comments
The problem was NEVER desktops (notice that Apple has NOT banned flash on the mac. In fact it performs best on the mac safari, apparently).
The question is the future of computing, i.e. mobile devices. Here the biggest issue is battery power, not CPU consumption. Of course, if you offload to the GPU, you will have lower CPU consumption. But you are still consuming more power (except, its the GPU now consuming some of that power)...
Where do you draw the line between what is part of the internet and what is adjacent?
Admittedly it's a nuanced point. But how about we start with Web standards? HTML, CSS, Javascript, whatever else you want to lump in there. Even H.264 for video and AAC for audio. These are published and widely implemented standards. Hell, you can even go all the way down to TCP/IP if you really want to, since that's the foundation on which all that other stuff is built.
Here's my thing: Flash is a document format, plus a piece of proprietary software for playing those documents back. It's just like Microsoft Word, as far as that narrow examination goes. You can find Microsoft Word documents on the Web, ready to be downloaded. Does that make Microsoft Word part of "the whole Internet?" Of course not. It's just a document format, and one you're not guaranteed to be able to work with.
Flash is the same way. It's included by default on a lot of computers, but it's not a standard. It's one company's product, that just happens to be popular for advertising and occasionally making really shitty, inaccessible, difficult-to-use, totally unnecessary Web sites.
If we declare that Flash is an integral part of "the Internet" (whatever we mean that to be), then why isn't Powerpoint? Powerpoint documents can be put up on Web sites and downloaded. Does that mean they're part of "the whole Internet?"
It just doesn't make any sense to me. If you're going to draw a line around part of the content that's out there and say "This is the core, these are the fundamental protocols and specifications," then you need at least some half-assed rationale for doing so. If you expand that circle to include Flash, why stop there? Why not include everything that can conceivably be posted to the Web?
Maybe I'm older than most people here; maybe I'm not, I dunno. But I vividly remember the days of the early 90s, when "browser plugins" were a thing. You had to have a RealAudio plugin, you had to have a Quicktime plugin (because it was a separate thing in those days), you had to have all these different plugins for handling different content types. Hell, Adobe even wanted people to have an Acrobat plugin just to read PDFs, if you can believe that! And eventually, you had to have a Shockwave plugin, then a Shockwave Flash plugin.
Those days are over. Flash is the only Internet plugin left (unless you count Silverlight, which is really just Flash with a paint job). And good riddance to them, because they were a pain.
Okay, how about this definition. If you don't wanna go with the whole "published and widely implemented standards" thing (which I freely admit is shaky at best), how about "The Internet is what your browser understands." If it has to be handled by a third-party plugin, it's not really a core part of the Internet. It's just another document format.
Better?
...against victims of the RDF
One, "less" is a comparative word. It means "not as much," and two, it doesn't imply that non-Flash content is scarce...
Three, App Store Apps should not even be included in your list... wtf?
Four, are you telling me that you never, ever peruse a website that requires flash? Ever? If not, then, fine. The iPhone is perfect for you.
You made some pretty royal assumptions on that one, John. 1) Android != Windows, 2) if the differences between iDevice efficiencies and non-iDevice efficiencies scale (which is unlikely considering battery life optimization is of primary concern in mobile devices), Android Flash absolutely could not be any worse than 50% more CPU intense, i.e. 66% of typical battery life.
Yeah, "Encoded" was not the correct terminology to use, but rather "packaged," or "presented" via flash.
If it is as easy as flipping a switch, why wouldn't every web site do it?
Fact is, video playback is not Flash's only trick. There is a lot of other flash-presented content that WOULD have to be re-"encoded" to work properly with HTML5.
Where do you draw the line between what is part of the internet and what is adjacent? Hell, my crappy Nokia 3100 could theoretically access "the whole internet," just in a terrible, text-only way. Just as rich text, images and CSS are now standards in mobile web browsing, so too is flash-style media presentation in desktop browsing. If I cannot view what is the predominant web multimedia platform on my iDevice, then I do not have the "full internet."
More internet than my Nokia 3100 and any other phone of its generation, that's for damn sure, but certainly not "full."
I think that's more than a bit of hyperbole...
Agreed that today's options are better... but that doesn't immediately change the fact that Flash is still being used A LOT.
Agreed here. Let the user decide!
What planet do you live on? Far less than 10% of world-wide consumer sales are Macs.
Uhh... it's exactly about picking battery life. Apple said so.
See above response to TomFoolery.
I don't like proprietary formats more than anyone else, but If the majority of the content is platform-entrenched, I'd bite it, and settle for that format.
By the way, speaking of proprietary formats, why doesn't Apple open up the App Store to all who wish to develop for the iPhone?
...Yeah, I went there. Apple is the prince of closed systems, second only to Microsoft.
-Clive
You don’t need Flash on the iDevices because there are alternative ways to get the content you want. That’s my point. Want to watch a video? QuickTime streams the H.264 video using hardware acceleration. Want to play a game? Get a free one from the App Store. Don’t want to go through the App Store for apps? Find a web app.
Here's my thing: Flash is a document format, plus a piece of proprietary software for playing those documents back. It's just like Microsoft Word, as far as that narrow examination goes. You can find Microsoft Word documents on the Web, ready to be downloaded. Does that make Microsoft Word part of "the whole Internet?" Of course not. It's just a document format, and one you're not guaranteed to be able to work with.
How about Acrobat? That format sucks more than Flash but Steve must be cool with it since it is on the iPhone. Or maybe it just doesn't pose as much of a threat to the App Store monopoly.
The publishers might have thought it was a pretty good format for their iPad content but apparently Steve doesn't think so. It's ePub for you, a format that has absolutely no traction whatsoever and currently the only authoring application for ePub is made by Adobe.
How much better is that? ePub is open source standards based so it must be better. However, after Apple reworks the format for DRM then how much of an open standard is that going to be? Not so much.
Silly!!
196% of the top 10 zillion web sites ALL use flash and it ALWAYS for really really really important stuff and not just super annoying web site ADs and porn-games like you might be thinking... In fact the entire backbone AND ribcage of the interweb is totally dependent on Flash and if you don't believe me just as Al Gore!
And most important... If Flash were to disappear Jesus would cry! Do you **really** want to be a party to THAT? I think not!
Baby Jesus or hippie Jesus?
Cause I feel like I could handle baby Jesus crying, kids cry all the time. Grown man crying, bit tougher. But to get rid of flash...
How about Acrobat? That format sucks more than Flash but Steve must be cool with it since it is on the iPhone. Or maybe it just doesn't pose as much of a threat to the App Store monopoly.
The publishers might have thought it was a pretty good format for their iPad content but apparently Steve doesn't think so. It's ePub for you, a format that has absolutely no traction whatsoever and currently the only authoring application for ePub is made by Adobe.
How much better is that? ePub is open source standards based so it must be better. However, after Apple reworks the format for DRM then how much of an open standard is that going to be? Not so much.
PDF is an open format, anyone can build their own viewer.
What are you talking about there are plenty of epub authoring software.
You don't know if it'll be DRM'd yet.
Here's my thing: Flash is a document format, plus a piece of proprietary software for playing those documents back. It's just like Microsoft Word, as far as that narrow examination goes. You can find Microsoft Word documents on the Web, ready to be downloaded. Does that make Microsoft Word part of "the whole Internet?" Of course not. It's just a document format, and one you're not guaranteed to be able to work with.
(...)
The thing is that I actually agree with you about the future of Flash and open standards. That doesn't make the problem disappear.
Speaking of MS Word (and all of Office, in fact) what is the primary format in which businesses type documents? Make Spreadsheets? Presentations? .doc, .xls, & .ppt. These are proprietary formats, yet are absolute necessities for businesses to be able to read, edit and share. While they are slowly being replaced by open formats, that doesn't make them any less important today.
If a company were to release a device aimed at business types, it damn well better be able to open .doc files! Likewise, if a company were to release a device aimed at browsing the "Full Internet," it better be able to read the most commonly used formats online, including SWF files...
That's my opinion, anyway...
You don?t need Flash on the iDevices because there are alternative ways to get the content you want. That?s my point. Want to watch a video? QuickTime streams the H.264 video using hardware acceleration. Want to play a game? Get a free one from the App Store. Don?t want to go through the App Store for apps? Find a web app.
That's call being compromised, and most consumers don't like that.
-Clive
How about Acrobat? That format sucks more than Flash but Steve must be cool with it since it is on the iPhone. Or maybe it just doesn't pose as much of a threat to the App Store monopoly.
The publishers might have thought it was a pretty good format for their iPad content but apparently Steve doesn't think so. It's ePub for you, a format that has absolutely no traction whatsoever and currently the only authoring application for ePub is made by Adobe.
How much better is that? ePub is open source standards based so it must be better. However, after Apple reworks the format for DRM then how much of an open standard is that going to be? Not so much.
So many incorrect statements. In my best Jack Bauer voice: Who do you work for?!
That format sucks more than Flash?
Why do you say that? First of all, to the extent that it matters, PDF is also known by the name "ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008." That's right, it's an international standard which anybody is free to implement. It's not controlled by anyone.
Second, PDF is really the universal standard for document exchange these days. There are some features bolted on to it for things like forms, but they've never really been adopted on a large scale because alternatives were superior. But for passing documents around, PDF is really outstanding.
Not to mention the fact that PDF is the format on which the entire printing industry lives. Pick up any book or magazine printed in the past, oh let's be conservative and say five years. Somewhere out there, on some server someplace, is the PDF that was used to engrave the printing plates that made it.
The publishers might have thought it was a pretty good format for their iPad content?
But they'd have been wrong. Read on.
It's ePub for you, a format that has absolutely no traction whatsoever and currently the only authoring application for ePub is made by Adobe.
PDF and ePub are designed for different applications. PDF is for static content, which comes from its roots as a format for the printing industry. On the other hand, ePub is specifically designed for content that must reformat itself to fit whatever output device is in use. It's basically XHTML, but it has some extensions that make it specifically suitable for publishing printed matter for electronic reading devices.
ePub is also defined by a handful of international standards. Again, anybody is free to implement them.
Also, there are a number of applications that can output the ePub format; InDesign is just one of them. I don't work in that industry so I can't speak to any of them by name, but they're out there. Google around. What's more, pretty much the only electronic reading device that doesn't already support ePub right out of the box is the Kindle. The Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble's device are both based on ePub. Hell, you can even get ePub apps for your little Android thing, if you really want to.
However, after Apple reworks the format for DRM then how much of an open standard is that going to be? Not so much.
Right, except DRM is one of the core features of the two-and-a-half-year-old ePub standard. No reworking was needed.
The problem was NEVER desktops (notice that Apple has NOT banned flash on the mac. In fact it performs best on the mac safari, apparently).
I don't think perform BEST on the the Mac not by a long shot (and every windows users seems to agree with me boasting how much better flash is on windows) AND while Flash may perform at subpar speeds on a Mac it only does so when it's not crashing or becomes unresponsive...
The ?less content? argument is stupid and false. There?s no lack of content on the iDevices. I can find all the web apps, h.264 videos, and App Store apps I could ever want.
I can't. As I've mentioned in other discussion, I'm researching on my new car and Nissan and Subaru NZ sites are dominantly Flash, thus completely useless without Flash support. Other car brands also use Flash to a certain degree... so in short, I can't do my research on my iPhone (nor could I on my hypothetical iPad).
Don't get me wrong - I still love my iPhone, but full Internet experience it is not.
I think one of the things that you hear a lot is that as soon as you click on a Flash element you hear the hard drive and the fans come on. That could be because you are running Click2Flash which is blocking the plugin. When you click it the plugin launches. This behavior is different if the plugin loads when the browser is launched without Click2Flash. In the later case you don't sense the ramp of launch on click, making it much less noticeable.
But with all the ads you have to run Click2Flash.
I think you're wrong on this, those Flash plugins are processor hogs.
I decided to install ClicktoFlash on my Macbook a fortnight ago to see if it made any difference. Before installing it I noticed that the fans in the Macbook were frequently on when using Safari. There were times when Safari would slow down until I had to quit and start the app again.
Now with ClicktoFlash I notice the fans don't come on until I activate a Flash plugin. I find Safari is noticeably more responsive.
The disadvantage is I've found some useful sites which make use of Flash, notably maps.google.co.uk and finance.google.com. The other sites are mainly travel sites.
What's odd is that I've accessed these sites on the Flash free iPhone with no reduction in info presented (well useful info), which hints that it's quite easy to do away with flash altogether.
It's disappointing that people can't see beyond Internet Explorer or Flash and infuriating some sites still stupidly proclaim Internet Explorer only, e.g. www.globalexpense.com.
I recollect Sir Tim Berners-Lee stating how he came up with http because different physicists had useful data on different incompatible machines and http would allow any machine to access any data.
I find it disgusting that Microsoft had used Internet Explorer in an attempt to subjugate and pervert that ideal.
The best solution is what will allow the widest range of devices access to the widest range of data. I thought one of the signs of good web design was to leave it to the device - be it mobile or desktop - to format and retrieve data according to screen size, bandwidth etc, again a move towards the intentions of the world wide web.
HTML5 is closer to that ideal than the proprietary Flash.
Ironically, Safari/Mac with Flash 10.1 (not HW accelerated) is almost as efficient as IE/Win with Flash 10.1 (HW accelerated). Safari uses 32.07% CPU, while IE uses 14.62*2 = 29.24% CPU.
(For those unfamiliar with both platforms, OS X measures CPU usage such that "one core = 100%", while Windows measure CPU usage such that "all available cores = 100%").
The article was not very clear on the procedure used with respect to that percentage issue.
On dual core for example Mac full CPU usage = 200% where full usage on Windows is 100%
So maybe my math is faulty or the data needs adjusting but it makes Flash look even less of a CPU hog.
This is not quite true. While Activity Monitor will measure 100 % per core in the list, if you go to the CPU tab, you'll see the total only measures to 100 %, regardless how many cores you have available (at least on 10.5 Leopard). The test methodology is very clear in where it takes it's data from.
- I used the CPU Usage directly from Windows and subtracted the % idle from Activity Monitor from 100% to derive total CPU utilization on the Mac.
They did back in 2006. It's called Core Animation.
Apparently it wasn't supported for content in Safari back in 2006 (despite that Core Animation was made available to the public with the release of 10.5, in late 2007), which makes your point moot. Core Animation obviously also does not support hardware accelerated decoding for AVC, or any video compression standard for that matter. I'm fairly sure hardware accelerating the actual drawing of video to the screen is in some of Apple's public APIs, but not decoding.
Right, except DRM is one of the core features of the two-and-a-half-year-old ePub standard. No reworking was needed.
I wasn't aware there was any description of DRM in the ePub spec. If you don't mind please direct me to the url so I can get the facts straight.
Edit: Actually that was was just a sarcastic remark. I am well aware of the DRM definitions in the ePub spec. DRM is allowed but is not specified in any detail as to how. Seriously, do think for a moment that a FairPlay Apple DRM ePub book will be easily read anywhere but on an Apple device?
My comments were in response to your post saying Flash being hard to work with document format and not part of the real Internet. Exactly like Acrobat which I have to work with everyday so I am very familiar with the inner workings of PDF standard which includes much more than static content and yes it is also part of the Internet. The SWF spec was opened by Adobe as well just not many people have decided to make readers for it. But it can be imported encrypted, decompiled and whatever you like. Doesn't make it more or less part of the Internet which is a totally stupid concept anyway.
If something can be sent from one computer to another across the Internet, it is part of the Internet. Not everything has to be read natively by your browser to technically be part of the Internet. Who came up with that definition of the Internet anyway? The Internet existed years before any browser was invented. Is email part of the Internet, it uses a specialize protocol and needs a dedicated client? Is FTP part of the Internet or is just HTML/CSS/JS because that is the side of the argument you are taking if you say that Flash is not part of the Internet. Flash is not part of iPad and iPhone, which is fine, but Flash is part of the Internet.
Flash shows significantly better performance, over a Mac, on a PC.
So why would anyone want a Mac over a PC?
Probably because I don't use Flash much on my Mac. In fact I have flash turned of (Click2Flash)
Not everyone thinks that Flash use is a deal breaker.
The disadvantage is I've found some useful sites which make use of Flash, notably maps.google.co.uk and finance.google.com. The other sites are mainly travel sites.
What's odd is that I've accessed these sites on the Flash free iPhone with no reduction in info presented (well useful info), which hints that it's quite easy to do away with flash altogether.
I don't think it is that easy to do away with Flash. Steve Jobs is the #1 shareholder of Disney and their sites (Disney.com, ABC.com, ESPN.com) have Flash video.
The more interesting cases are all the online games that require Flash. Would they suck up all the iPhone battery life? Worse than native apps?
Seriously, do think for a moment that a FairPlay Apple DRM ePub book will be easily read anywhere but on an Apple device?
No, I don't. But I also don't think FairPlay-protected music was easy to listen to anywhere but on a Mac or an iPod, and that didn't stop iTunes from growing to become the dominant online music retailer before the protection began to be phased out.
I was going to say something similar about video content, but I honestly can't think of another online video content retailer. Netflix is a streaming subscription service, Hulu is a streaming ad-supported service ?*does anybody else even sell video content online the way iTunes does?
Doesn't make it more or less part of the Internet which is a totally stupid concept anyway.
Now that I agree with! When Apple advertised the iPhone as being "the real Internet" it made sense because the alternative was the WAP ghetto. Safari on the iPhone was a full-on HTML browser, not a cruddy little WAP browser, so the distinction was sensible. But HP's "the real Internet" gag is nitpicky at best, and downright meaningless at worst. Totally on the same page with you there.