Sorry, but are you insane? Less battery life, constant slowdowns, and application crashes make a better iPhone experience? Flash doesn't add anything good to the mobile experience. Yes we miss the web we are used to, but that is because so much of the web we are used to is based on flash, this must change. Sometimes change hurts, but in the long run the web and mobile experience will be better without Flash.
Have you used Flash on Android ever?
I experience none of those things on a Droid over a year old. If I did I would be the first to say it.
It works great for videos. Flash on OS X is probably crappier than on Android. Hey, perhaps now all those programs at Adobe can make flash on OS X stop sucking. So, I win one, I lose one. I'm okay with that! Any other Droid/Mac people have similar feelings on this?
I think the competition element of this was overplayed. Both Apple and Adobe are made up of thousands of employees who can see where the industry is heading. I think it was more to do with timing.
Adobe have obviously invested a lot of resources into providing a plugin to make up for the lack of development in web standards. The problem with it is that because it is controlled by one company and allows content authors an end-to-end service like Apple's (author on Adobe, deploy on Adobe), it could be relied upon and far too many people did.
This led to the point where almost all rich content online was controlled by a single company. If Adobe ever collapsed, there would have been no reliable alternative to do the same job. There's also the reliance on them developing hardware-acceleration support for every device and the more SoC configurations there are, the more it gets out of control.
Moving to open standards benefits Android and Adobe more than anyone. It relieves Adobe of their support headache and it relieves Android users of some performance and battery woes.
I think the difference between Adobe and Apple is that Adobe have a commitment to content creation customers as they depend on them. Apple has a drive to move the technology industry in the right direction and has to do it by force because otherwise it takes too long. Both companies have the same goal but different schedules. Adobe doesn't want to jump before it's safe, Apple understands that people who don't want to jump need to be pushed otherwise they'll take far longer to jump than they need to.
Just wanna say thanks for such a level-headed post!
I think the competition element of this was overplayed. Both Apple and Adobe are made up of thousands of employees who can see where the industry is heading. I think it was more to do with timing.
etc. etc.
Timing? Really?
This was competition through and through. Adobe's responses to Steve's open letter were pure outright competitive statements. Adobe was out to prove Steve wrong and it backfired on them.
This was competition through and through. Adobe's responses to Steve's open letter were pure outright competitive statements. Adobe was out to prove Steve wrong and it backfired on them.
jmho
They have a common goal but had two different viewpoints about how to get there. What is interesting is the Adobe response from the co-founders actually backs up the HTML 5 route more than the Flash route despite explicitly backing Flash:
Adobe's HTML Edge tool didn't get built overnight though, they have been progressing towards this but it has taken a long time for HTML5 to become viable for deploying to a large customer base. It's actually Microsoft that's held everyone back more than anyone and for Adobe, having a plugin that overrides the browser was the only real option.
When Microsoft released IE9 in March this year, this has at least provided a solid roadmap going forward. Four years ago, Microsoft gave no indication they'd do something like this and even went slightly the other way building Silverlight.
There's no denying there's a competitive element between all the companies involved but they employ some of the best people in their field and these people are very smart and they understand the industry. Sometimes they just end up being wrong, not because their position was wrong or taken for competitive reasons but because they didn't have the initiative or balls to force everyone else to do things the right way like Apple and instead try to hold onto workarounds or stop-gaps that work for the present.
The measure of how competitive this whole thing has been will be evident in how much of a defeat it will have been for the 'losers'. I imagine the Adobe team aren't too upset about not having to figure out how to support a low-level plugin on dozens of vastly different hardware configurations. If Apple really wanted to punish them, they would have let them keep going.
Comments
Sorry, but are you insane? Less battery life, constant slowdowns, and application crashes make a better iPhone experience? Flash doesn't add anything good to the mobile experience. Yes we miss the web we are used to, but that is because so much of the web we are used to is based on flash, this must change. Sometimes change hurts, but in the long run the web and mobile experience will be better without Flash.
Have you used Flash on Android ever?
I experience none of those things on a Droid over a year old. If I did I would be the first to say it.
It works great for videos. Flash on OS X is probably crappier than on Android. Hey, perhaps now all those programs at Adobe can make flash on OS X stop sucking. So, I win one, I lose one. I'm okay with that! Any other Droid/Mac people have similar feelings on this?
I think the competition element of this was overplayed. Both Apple and Adobe are made up of thousands of employees who can see where the industry is heading. I think it was more to do with timing.
Adobe have obviously invested a lot of resources into providing a plugin to make up for the lack of development in web standards. The problem with it is that because it is controlled by one company and allows content authors an end-to-end service like Apple's (author on Adobe, deploy on Adobe), it could be relied upon and far too many people did.
This led to the point where almost all rich content online was controlled by a single company. If Adobe ever collapsed, there would have been no reliable alternative to do the same job. There's also the reliance on them developing hardware-acceleration support for every device and the more SoC configurations there are, the more it gets out of control.
Moving to open standards benefits Android and Adobe more than anyone. It relieves Adobe of their support headache and it relieves Android users of some performance and battery woes.
I think the difference between Adobe and Apple is that Adobe have a commitment to content creation customers as they depend on them. Apple has a drive to move the technology industry in the right direction and has to do it by force because otherwise it takes too long. Both companies have the same goal but different schedules. Adobe doesn't want to jump before it's safe, Apple understands that people who don't want to jump need to be pushed otherwise they'll take far longer to jump than they need to.
Just wanna say thanks for such a level-headed post!
I think the competition element of this was overplayed. Both Apple and Adobe are made up of thousands of employees who can see where the industry is heading. I think it was more to do with timing.
etc. etc.
Timing? Really?
This was competition through and through. Adobe's responses to Steve's open letter were pure outright competitive statements. Adobe was out to prove Steve wrong and it backfired on them.
jmho
Timing? Really?
This was competition through and through. Adobe's responses to Steve's open letter were pure outright competitive statements. Adobe was out to prove Steve wrong and it backfired on them.
jmho
They have a common goal but had two different viewpoints about how to get there. What is interesting is the Adobe response from the co-founders actually backs up the HTML 5 route more than the Flash route despite explicitly backing Flash:
http://www.adobe.com/choice/openmarkets.html
Adobe's HTML Edge tool didn't get built overnight though, they have been progressing towards this but it has taken a long time for HTML5 to become viable for deploying to a large customer base. It's actually Microsoft that's held everyone back more than anyone and for Adobe, having a plugin that overrides the browser was the only real option.
When Microsoft released IE9 in March this year, this has at least provided a solid roadmap going forward. Four years ago, Microsoft gave no indication they'd do something like this and even went slightly the other way building Silverlight.
There's no denying there's a competitive element between all the companies involved but they employ some of the best people in their field and these people are very smart and they understand the industry. Sometimes they just end up being wrong, not because their position was wrong or taken for competitive reasons but because they didn't have the initiative or balls to force everyone else to do things the right way like Apple and instead try to hold onto workarounds or stop-gaps that work for the present.
The measure of how competitive this whole thing has been will be evident in how much of a defeat it will have been for the 'losers'. I imagine the Adobe team aren't too upset about not having to figure out how to support a low-level plugin on dozens of vastly different hardware configurations. If Apple really wanted to punish them, they would have let them keep going.