Adobe caves, adds support for Apple's HTTP Live Streaming standard
In a move that could help defuse ongoing tension between the two companies, Adobe has revealed plans to support streaming video on the iPad 2 by adding support for Apple's HTTP Live Streaming standard to its Flash Media Server product.
Adobe first broke the news in a blog post offering a sneak peak at the company's new streaming video features, as noted by Ars Technica. The new feature was also previewed by the company at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show this week in Las Vegas.
In addition to Adobe's own HTTP Dynamic Streaming standard, which uses H.264/AAC codecs and the F4F file format, future versions of Flash Media Server will now support the HTTP Live Streaming protocol developed by Apple.
According to Kevin Towes, product manager for Adobe Flash Media Server, the company "is reducing the publishing complexity for broadcasters who need to reach browsers supporting HLS through HTML5 (such as Safari) or devices where Adobe Flash is not installed." Devices with Flash installed will continued to use MPEG4-fragments to stream video over HTTP to Flash.
In a video demonstration posted to YouTube, Towes live streams a video to an iPad 2 using Safari and an HTML5 page, as well as on a Mac using Safari and Adobe Flash 10.2 and a Motorola Xoom tablet.
HTTP Live Streaming
Apple first adopted HTTP Live Streaming in version 3.0 of iPhone OS in 2009, though the protocol was leaked in May of that year when Apple submitted the standard to the Internet Engineering Task Force.
The live streaming protocol replaces Apple's older QuickTime Streaming Server protocol with an efficient streaming protocol that divides broadcasts into short ten second clips and sends them along an MPEG transport stream without requiring the use of special servers. Servers are able to store multiple versions of clips in different formats, allowing users to dynamically scale streams up or down depending on available bandwidth.
Last year, Apple leveraged HTTP Live Streaming to resume the practice of offering live streams of media event keynotes, which it had stopped in 2005.
In February 2010, an Israeli technology company sued Apple over the Live Streaming technology, alleging that the Cupertino, Calif., company had violated its own media streaming patents from 1999.
Adobe v. Apple
With sales of Apple's iPad and iPhone continuing to gain steam, Adobe's hand appears to have been forced. As such, Adobe's announcement has been taken by some to be a small victory on Apple's part in a heated clash between the two companies.
Last year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs sparked a war of words with an open letter criticizing Adobe and Flash.
In the letter, Jobs defended Apple's decision not to support Flash on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Jobs specifically referred to six weak points for Flash: openness; the "full Web;" reliability, security and performance; battery life; touch; and the substandard quality of third-party development tools
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen quickly responded, calling the issues raised in Jobs' letter a "smokescreen" and shifting the blame for crashes on the Mac from Flash to Mac OS X.
Apple had drawn criticism for updating the iOS 4 Software Development Kit to ban intermediary tools, such as a feature in Adobe's Creative Suite 5 that would port Flash software to the iPhone.
In September last year, Apple removed the ban, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. Adobe quickly responded by announcing that it would resume development of its Packager for iPhone tool.
Adobe first broke the news in a blog post offering a sneak peak at the company's new streaming video features, as noted by Ars Technica. The new feature was also previewed by the company at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show this week in Las Vegas.
In addition to Adobe's own HTTP Dynamic Streaming standard, which uses H.264/AAC codecs and the F4F file format, future versions of Flash Media Server will now support the HTTP Live Streaming protocol developed by Apple.
According to Kevin Towes, product manager for Adobe Flash Media Server, the company "is reducing the publishing complexity for broadcasters who need to reach browsers supporting HLS through HTML5 (such as Safari) or devices where Adobe Flash is not installed." Devices with Flash installed will continued to use MPEG4-fragments to stream video over HTTP to Flash.
In a video demonstration posted to YouTube, Towes live streams a video to an iPad 2 using Safari and an HTML5 page, as well as on a Mac using Safari and Adobe Flash 10.2 and a Motorola Xoom tablet.
HTTP Live Streaming
Apple first adopted HTTP Live Streaming in version 3.0 of iPhone OS in 2009, though the protocol was leaked in May of that year when Apple submitted the standard to the Internet Engineering Task Force.
The live streaming protocol replaces Apple's older QuickTime Streaming Server protocol with an efficient streaming protocol that divides broadcasts into short ten second clips and sends them along an MPEG transport stream without requiring the use of special servers. Servers are able to store multiple versions of clips in different formats, allowing users to dynamically scale streams up or down depending on available bandwidth.
Last year, Apple leveraged HTTP Live Streaming to resume the practice of offering live streams of media event keynotes, which it had stopped in 2005.
In February 2010, an Israeli technology company sued Apple over the Live Streaming technology, alleging that the Cupertino, Calif., company had violated its own media streaming patents from 1999.
Adobe v. Apple
With sales of Apple's iPad and iPhone continuing to gain steam, Adobe's hand appears to have been forced. As such, Adobe's announcement has been taken by some to be a small victory on Apple's part in a heated clash between the two companies.
Last year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs sparked a war of words with an open letter criticizing Adobe and Flash.
In the letter, Jobs defended Apple's decision not to support Flash on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Jobs specifically referred to six weak points for Flash: openness; the "full Web;" reliability, security and performance; battery life; touch; and the substandard quality of third-party development tools
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen quickly responded, calling the issues raised in Jobs' letter a "smokescreen" and shifting the blame for crashes on the Mac from Flash to Mac OS X.
Apple had drawn criticism for updating the iOS 4 Software Development Kit to ban intermediary tools, such as a feature in Adobe's Creative Suite 5 that would port Flash software to the iPhone.
In September last year, Apple removed the ban, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. Adobe quickly responded by announcing that it would resume development of its Packager for iPhone tool.
Comments
Stop turning, Mr. Orwell.
According to Kevin Towes, product manager for Adobe Flash Media Server, the company "is reducing the publishing complexity for broadcasters who need to reach browsers supporting HLS through HTML5 (such as Safari) or devices where Adobe Flash is not installed." Devices with Flash installed will continued to use MPEG4-fragments to stream video over HTTP to Flash.
So in a way, Adobe's gesture of good will can be said as still half-hearted in supporting the non-Flash capable devices.
I was on a project in 2009 that deployed Wowza Media to stream to iOS clients and flash clients.
I wonder how much market share they have taken from Adobe in the streaming server segment.
According to Kevin Towes, product manager for Adobe Flash Media Server, the company "is reducing the publishing complexity for broadcasters who need to reach browsers supporting HLS through HTML5 (such as Safari) or devices where Adobe Flash is not installed." Devices with Flash installed will continued to use MPEG4-fragments to stream video over HTTP to Flash.
In what could be a goodwill gesture meant to put to rest the "Flash War" that has raged between the two companies since last year...
What "Flash War"? Apple isn't fighting Adobe at all. Apple said it wasn't going to support it, and here was why, and that was that. The only ones raising a stink are the folks at Adobe, the Win/Tech/Phan-tards and anyone else that believes the "full" web is only achieved by running an outdated, CPU/Battery sucking piece of bloated software that is long overdue to be taken to the back of the pen and peacefully put down with a bolt-gun.
'Gesture of goodwill.'
Stop turning, Mr. Orwell.
"Gesture of goodwill", "Adobe caves"... My gawd if this isn't 200% speculation with a heavy dollop of conjecture, I don't know what is.
Seems Adobe is finally seeing the writing on the iPad wall. Is this a big step toward Flash irrelevancy?
I think it is highly unlikely that this is a big step by Adobe towards "Flash irrelevancy". For example, Adobe has just released their latest update to create BB, Android and iOS apps using Flash: http://www.adobe.com/products/flash-builder.html.
I agree however that Adobe is starting to "see the writing on the iPad wall". They themselves are struggling to adapt. Again, the latest update to Creative Suite talks about "HTML 5 tools". A lot of InDesign is also geared towards magazines for iPad and Android, though one cannot compile the digital magazine app, you have to go through additional steps with a custom Adobe Digital Publisher service.
This is what I don't get. Are apps easy to develop, or hard to develop? For some, it's magical, amazing and seems effortless. For others, especially those entrenched in Flash (which remember would be a 3 to 10 year investment for many people), it seems really hard and controlled heavily by Apple. This is the real "war". Deciding where to place your bets.
In 2000 I had to work hard at convincing people to deploy Flash. 10 years later, I have to convince them *not* to use Flash. The iPad and iPhone element helps the argument quite a bit now.
Should I try to use Flash Builder to make Android and iOS apps? To me, that seems... strange.
HTML5, Android, iOS, web apps, native apps, social media, cloud services... Wow, I guess in just over a decade we have taken a big leap from a humble web page with little animated gifs, a hideous tiled background and trusty <hr> tags. It seems overwhelming at times now.
Which means Click2Flash will have less work to do.
Unfortunately, no. From the PR, the server will send the video wrapped in Flash if your browser reports you have Flash available [which it will if you have Click2Flash installed].
So what you really want to do is uninstall Flash. Then you can also uninstall Click2Flash and enjoy a longer battery life on your portable device!
So what you really want to do is uninstall Flash. Then you can also uninstall Click2Flash and enjoy a longer battery life on your portable device!
Seems Adobe is finally seeing the writing on the iPad wall. Is this a big step toward Flash irrelevancy?
Step towards? As far as I'm concerned, we've already reached that step.
This is the real "war". Deciding where to place your bets.
I think it is highly unlikely that this is a big step by Adobe towards "Flash irrelevancy". For example, Adobe has just released their latest update to create BB, Android and iOS apps using Flash: http://www.adobe.com/products/flash-builder.html.
I agree however that Adobe is starting to "see the writing on the iPad wall". They themselves are struggling to adapt. Again, the latest update to Creative Suite talks about "HTML 5 tools". A lot of InDesign is also geared towards magazines for iPad and Android, though one cannot compile the digital magazine app, you have to go through additional steps with a custom Adobe Digital Publisher service.
This is what I don't get. Are apps easy to develop, or hard to develop? For some, it's magical, amazing and seems effortless. For others, especially those entrenched in Flash (which remember would be a 3 to 10 year investment for many people), it seems really hard and controlled heavily by Apple. This is the real "war". Deciding where to place your bets.
In 2000 I had to work hard at convincing people to deploy Flash. 10 years later, I have to convince them *not* to use Flash. The iPad and iPhone element helps the argument quite a bit now.
Should I try to use Flash Builder to make Android and iOS apps? To me, that seems... strange.
HTML5, Android, iOS, web apps, native apps, social media, cloud services... Wow, I guess in just over a decade we have taken a big leap from a humble web page with little animated gifs, a hideous tiled background and trusty <hr> tags. It seems overwhelming at times now.
I would love to see someone's webpage from 10 years compared to now to see the difference.
I would love to see someone's webpage from 10 years compared to now to see the difference.
You can start with Apple's home page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernelpanic/sets/283374/
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.apple.com
Don't you just love how the first few screens were the typical menu-on-the left, then Apple blew that away with a print-oriented design that from Steve's return until well into 2005 was very different from the standard corporate website.
There's also a link floating around comparing the header menu on the Apple website over the past 10 years which I can't seem to find right now.
Anyone that has more info please post here. I'm feeling very nostalgic at the moment. Almost like I remember every page and the emotions regarding the products, though I can't quite remember some of my life circumstances around those times this past decade. Wow. Real Deja Vu.
What is amazing is that the essence of the Apple home page has not changed for 10 years. Menu bar, big hero image, one bar of news, four boxes of highlights. Of course in 2011 we have HTML5-ish stuff and a lot more video.
Now everyone is drinking the Apple Koolaide!
Oh look, another one
Oh look, another one
I once considered using the handle on AI ... "AppleGaramondStretched"