Adobe manager puts partial blame on Apple for mobile Flash failure

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  • Reply 81 of 127
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


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



    That's ridiculous logic. The fact that some people prefer software that works makes them a hater?



    And blockers don't solve the problem. First, there are many sites and/ or features that only work with Flash. A blocker doesn't allow you to use that site at all. Second, even for video and things that could just as easily be handled with html, when the site uses Flash, the blocker means you don't get the video - and the site owner doesn't get the message that they need to drop a useless, inefficient, insecure technology.
  • Reply 82 of 127
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


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



    If it is bloated whores you are looking for, try Visual Studio for a while.
  • Reply 83 of 127
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post


    That's ridiculous logic. The fact that some people prefer software that works makes them a hater?



    And blockers don't solve the problem. First, there are many sites and/ or features that only work with Flash.



    I guess not everyone feels the same way you do about Flash. As you say, many sites still use Flash.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post


    and the site owner doesn't get the message that they need to drop a useless, inefficient, insecure technology.





    If it is useless then don't use it. That is the only way the site owner will get the message.
  • Reply 84 of 127
    Over the years I've seen people pontificate about how flash runs great on their device, but i've never experienced that to be true myself. I've had two Android devices, neither of which could be considered as resource constrained as a phone would be, and on both of them Flash simply sucked. There really isn't a better way to put it - it was slow and buggy. Crashed often. Stuttered and hung. It was basically useless.



    I have a Sony TV with Google TV built into it. I bought it primarily so I could test large screen software I develop at home. I also have an Apple TV. I wind up using the Apple TV a lot, because Flash on the Android GoogleTV platform is so rotten.



    Listen, you only have to get the 'Plugin crashed' sad face from Android so many times before you realize that Flash is essentially useless on an android device. Think about that for a minute as it pertains to Google Tv. There you have a device for which one of the major draws is being able to present internet content (like YouTube) on your big screen TV... and the underlying technology is so much of a farce that it is basically unusable for its intended purpose. Who in their right mind would ever think that it is ok for a consumer appliance like a TV to ever crash in the middle of programming? It's absurd.



    Flash is not performant or reliable on mobile and resource constrained devices, no matter what anyone has to say about it. Those who claim it 'runs great' on their handset probably haven't used it extensively, or they have a different grading mechanism than the typical consumer. Consumer appliances have to provide a level of reliability that is much greater than the typical desktop computer - the expectations are just there. Phones that crash in the middle of phone calls Televisions that crash in the middle of programs are not acceptable, and Flash simply is not able to deliver the performance and reliability needed. That's the bottom line.
  • Reply 85 of 127
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Postulant View Post


    I'm surprised Android's "500,000" activations per day couldn't sustain Flash.



    Well that's the issue isn't it. All the tech pundits, Fandroids, and anti-Apple bloggers predicted the opposite. They predicted the lack of Flash on iOS would damage Apple badly and cause the ultimate failure of the platform. Now they want to blame Apple for mobile Flash's demise. They simply can't have it both ways.



    Meanwhile, if you read the Isaacson biography, you will find out that Adobe pissed Jobs off long before mobile Flash became an issue. I remember how long it took Adobe to port Photoshop to OS X and even longer to release the OS X Intel version. Something went wrong between Adobe and Apple and they've had a lukewarm relationship ever since.
  • Reply 86 of 127
    If you read Mike Chambers' blog and the posts/responses as well as the linked product blog/posts/responses....



    You come away with the impression that a lot more than the mobile browser Flash plugin is set for EOL.



    As typical with Adobe offerings -- why have one bloated solution when three or four, overlapping bloated partial-solutions will do.



    For Flash, I count Flash, Flex, AIR, Flash Professional, Flash Builder and one or two future Flash replacements.



    From what I've read there are quite a few companies and Web IT Departments/Developers who have organized their businesses around Flash and its derivatives -- often spending hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in the process.



    The Lorelei song of Flash has been the capability to deliver a single, platform-independent implementation of a programming task.



    Like, Java before it, Flash has failed to deliver on its tempting promise.



    Now, computing is changing from the PC era to the post PC era -- the platforms we've known and loved (or hated) for the last 3 decades are becoming less relevant in what billions of people do.



    The Internet and Web have been part of this disruption -- but this is changing too.



    Siri (and other offerings) are changing the way we use the web and (soon) the desktop too.



    We will empower the Siris to know what we do, how we do it -- then deputize them to act on our behalf -- running whatever apps and perform any needed searches or surfing -- presenting results or cogent alternatives for our approval -- minimizing distractions.



    What gets lost in the process, unseen except by the Seris, are all the intermediate presentations of results... and all the points of monetization that go with them.



    Soon, most of the worlds population will not see the Flash ads, Flash [restaurant] web sites... nor the web searches/ads/click-throughs that deliver us there.



    The Siris will bypass all that.



    So, what happens to the Flashes, the Googles, the Legacy desktop apps (that can't be run by your Siri assistant)...



    Damned if I know... but they will no longer be the major players!
  • Reply 87 of 127
    Mobile Flash is dead, good. Can we do this on OS X too?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nelfrancis View Post


    I enjoy reading Apple insider. I really do. Even now I am typing this on my iPad2. But after reading your daily for over a year, I cannot help but detect a consistent bias in favor of Apple. This article makes it clear to me.



    When I go to my local Nissan dealership, they are clearly biased into thinking that Nissan products are the best out there. This will not be tolerated.



    roog
  • Reply 88 of 127
    Hey, Tod... I see you lurkin' out there...



    Where you been?
  • Reply 89 of 127
    Just uninstalled flash.
  • Reply 90 of 127
    Nelfrancis says ... "Are you just living in fear of falling out of Apple's good graces? Are you actually Apple employees? Or are you blinded by the light...so smitten with the Apple wave that you cannot see any signal that might minimize its stature?"



    Perhaps you need to read the Steve Jobs biography and understand what drove the man. I can imagine exactly what he would have said at product team meetings when the issue of Flash support was raised ... 'Flash is a piece of shite'.



    Hopefully all product development managers in the IT industry now know what it takes to develop a product portfolio like Steve Jobs did at Apple. People are 'smitten' with Apple and its products because they are so much better than those that are developed second-class developers under the evil eye of accountants who insist on cutting costs on both quality and design.



    May the spirit of Jobs and Apple live on in the IT industry for ever more, and the spirit of Adobe/Flash and Microsoft/Ballmer rapidly fade away.
  • Reply 91 of 127
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by purpleshorts View Post


    What gets me is the irony:



    If you say HTML5 will do everything Flash will do,

    and you say you hate what Flash does,

    then what, exactly, are you saying?



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



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



    The problem is not what Flash does, the problem how it does it. It is buggy, full of security holes and even optimized applications take up far more CPU time (and therefore battery life) than is required - it is also proprietary.



    HTML5 is pretty much the opposite.
  • Reply 92 of 127
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by benanderson89 View Post


    The problem is not what Flash does, the problem how it does it. It is buggy, full of security holes and even optimized applications take up far more CPU time (and therefore battery life) than is required - it is also proprietary.



    HTML5 is pretty much the opposite.



    I'd bet building a native app iOS in Xcode v. an equivalent iOS app built using Adobe's Flash Builder would also yeild some surprising performance differences.
  • Reply 93 of 127
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    I'd bet building a native app iOS in Xcode v. an equivalent iOS app built using Adobe's Flash Builder would also yeild some surprising performance differences.



    Most likely - it would negate the need for the Actionscript Virtual Machine (AVM) to translate code on the fly. Plus, the Actionscript language has Zero multi-threading capabilities - however, the AVM itself creates so many threads I always wonder what on earth the plugin is doing that warrants so many of them.



    An Air app would overload the CPU with pointless threads, work the GPU more than required for the vector graphics and any application that requires any form of data processing would be ungodly slow due to its single threaded, single core nature.
  • Reply 94 of 127
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AbsoluteDesignz View Post


    never saw that argument...ever...



    bragging about flash? sure some did...



    most just enjoyed the option of turning it on when it was necessary.



    but I don't recall anyone saying that the lack of flash will destroy iOS.







    then again mindless fanboys being mindless fanboys (true mindless fanboys, not people like me who hardly scratch the surface) I wouldn't be shocked if someone did say that. But it wouldn't be big enough to make a general statement like that.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    Here are a couple?
    And those are recent. You get back to 2007 when the iPhone won't have Flash Lite and you'll see a lot more blatant remarks about how the iPhone, along with its keyboard-less HW, will never take off.
    In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. ~Steve Jobs, April 2010:



    Thanks Solips for making the effort. I was going to, honestly I was. But then after a moment of though decided not to. If he could not read enough of the countless postings, trolls, blogs, etc.. all describing the demise of Apple's non-Flash approach and realize it's been said since essentially day one, I was simply writing him off as uninformed.
  • Reply 95 of 127
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by pauldfullerton View Post


    Nelfrancis says ... "Are you just living in fear of falling out of Apple's good graces? Are you actually Apple employees? Or are you blinded by the light...so smitten with the Apple wave that you cannot see any signal that might minimize its stature?"



    Perhaps you need to read the Steve Jobs biography and understand what drove the man. I can imagine exactly what he would have said at product team meetings when the issue of Flash support was raised ... 'Flash is a piece of shite'.



    Hopefully all product development managers in the IT industry now know what it takes to develop a product portfolio like Steve Jobs did at Apple. People are 'smitten' with Apple and its products because they are so much better than those that are developed second-class developers under the evil eye of accountants who insist on cutting costs on both quality and design.



    May the spirit of Jobs and Apple live on in the IT industry for ever more, and the spirit of Adobe/Flash and Microsoft/Ballmer rapidly fade away.



    +++ QFT



    This



  • Reply 96 of 127
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    I'd bet building a native app iOS in Xcode v. an equivalent iOS app built using Adobe's Flash Builder would also yeild some surprising performance differences.



    Maybe. Apple doesn't allow runtime interpreters and virtual machines on iOS, if I recall correctly. This would mean any Flash "translators" would have to emit Objective-C source or LLVM instructions to get around the restriction. A quick web search netted the answer: LLVM.



    http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_i...od_iphone.html



    Adobe simply created an ActionScript front-end to LLVM. Optimizations are done to LLVM code before compiling it down to native ARM assembly.
  • Reply 97 of 127
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by benanderson89 View Post


    The problem is not what Flash does, the problem how it does it. It is buggy, full of security holes and even optimized applications take up far more CPU time (and therefore battery life) than is required - it is also proprietary.



    HTML5 is pretty much the opposite.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    I'd bet building a native app iOS in Xcode v. an equivalent iOS app built using Adobe's Flash Builder would also yeild some surprising performance differences.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by benanderson89 View Post


    Most likely - it would negate the need for the Actionscript Virtual Machine (AVM) to translate code on the fly. Plus, the Actionscript language has Zero multi-threading capabilities - however, the AVM itself creates so many threads I always wonder what on earth the plugin is doing that warrants so many of them.



    An Air app would overload the CPU with pointless threads, work the GPU more than required for the vector graphics and any application that requires any form of data processing would be ungodly slow due to its single threaded, single core nature.



    Add to that, Flash and its derivatives insert themselves as middleware between the app and the target device and OS.



    Flash, et al, implement the lowest-common-denominator of features, and implement them so that they run on the greatest common multiple of OSes and devices.



    This means that it's in Adobe's interest not to exploit new capabilities or exploit hardware features until they become mainstream.





    I don't want my apps limited by some other manufacturers' device running yet aonther company's OS -- both of which are, likely, out of date.





  • Reply 98 of 127
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post


    Maybe. Apple doesn't allow runtime interpreters and virtual machines on iOS, if I recall correctly. This would mean any Flash "translators" would have to emit Objective-C source or LLVM instructions to get around the restriction. A quick web search netted the answer: LLVM.



    http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_i...od_iphone.html



    Adobe simply created an ActionScript front-end to LLVM. Optimizations are done to LLVM code before compiling it down to native ARM assembly.



    That would explain some things...



    1) AIR appears to run acceptably fast and [mostly] responsive on an iPad 2



    2) but AIR apps don't act quite right:

    -- no variable-speed scrolling - flick, fast start, then slow down

    -- no bump/bounce when the end of a scroll is reached

    -- scroll always centers on an item

    -- no universal pinch-zoom capability within the app

    -- apparently no capability to handle more than 2 concurrent touches

    -- noticible lag when dragging - the hand moves, then the dragged item moves



    3) I suspect that using Flash-generated general functions is less efficient than native iOS specific functions



    4) Not sure if AIR is robust enough to exploit iDevice features across several iOS versions





    I get the impression that AIR iOS apps are lobotomized to make them "just acceptable" for iDevices, so that the same code base can be used for Android, QNX...



    It's almost like the Adobe-generated "magazine" apps -- they're all content...



    They don't appear to use any standard UI, expected iOS features don't work, and the UX is confusing and unsettling...



    They're just there...
  • Reply 99 of 127
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum View Post


    That would explain some things...



    1) AIR appears to run acceptably fast and [mostly] responsive on an iPad 2



    2) but AIR apps don't act quite right:

    -- no variable-speed scrolling - flick, fast start, then slow down

    -- no bump/bounce when the end of a scroll is reached

    -- scroll always centers on an item

    -- no universal pinch-zoom capability within the app

    -- apparently no capability to handle more than 2 concurrent touches

    -- noticible lag when dragging - the hand moves, then the dragged item moves



    3) I suspect that using Flash-generated general functions is less efficient than native iOS specific functions



    4) Not sure if AIR is robust enough to exploit iDevice features across several iOS versions





    I get the impression that AIR iOS apps are lobotomized to make them "just acceptable" for iDevices, so that the same code base can be used for Android, QNX...



    It's almost like the Adobe-generated "magazine" apps -- they're all content...



    They don't appear to use any standard UI, expected iOS features don't work, and the UX is confusing and unsettling...



    They're just there...



    Yeah, I was just responding to the speed question. The way Adobe targets iOS with Flash, it ends up isolating the ActionScript from the iOS libraries so programmers can never directly, say, use Core Animation. The result is what you're describing: lobotomized apps. It might be acceptable for games where you never really see the iOS UI, but for productivity apps, it might produce a rather un-iOS-like user experience.
  • Reply 100 of 127
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post


    Yeah, I was just responding to the speed question. The way Adobe targets iOS with Flash, it ends up isolating the ActionScript from the iOS libraries so programmers can never directly, say, use Core Animation. The result is what you're describing: lobotomized apps. It might be acceptable for games where you never really see the iOS UI, but for productivity apps, it might produce a rather un-iOS-like user experience.



    Does AIR use OpenCL or GCD... I doubt it.



    Then AIR is the poster boy for LCD middleware that Steve feared... All of a sudden we have a 3rd-party setting the bar for Apple app features, UI, UX, performance.



    I am surprised That Apple allowed/allows this!
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