The silly views about Flash expressed by many on this forum are quite a wake-up call for a Mac-enthusiast and Appleinsider lurker like myself - it becomes easier to see why so many find Mac enthusiasts so irritatingly smug.
Latching on to what Steve J says and then deluding yourself that it's your own viewpoint by focusing on some limited bit of personal experience should not be mistaken for an informed discussion about technology.
Please - for anyone actually interested in the pros/cons/future of Flash, Abster2core's link is a good starting point.
So when I use my browser, (Safari) it won't work, but they're going to build me a new browser that does use flash and work?
Anyone else think Apple will really go along with this?
I see nothing in the SDK that would prevent them from allowing it. WebKit is freely available and built into the SDK for easy access, it isn't a plugin that would have to run as a separate app in background, and to prevent others from creating a legitimate web browser in favour of your built-in browser would be a legal issue.
This is the only possibility I can see for Flash to show up under the current SDK guidelines, but if you have a different scenario in mind please post it as I'm just speculating here.
The silly views about Flash expressed by many on this forum are quite a wake-up call for a Mac-enthusiast and Appleinsider lurker like myself - it becomes easier to see why so many find Mac enthusiasts so irritatingly smug.
Latching on to what Steve J says and then deluding yourself that it's your own viewpoint by focusing on some limited bit of personal experience should not be mistaken for an informed discussion about technology.
Please - for anyone actually interested in the pros/cons/future of Flash, Abster2core's link is a good starting point.
Flash is a proprietary format designed to hijack web standards (and in Adobe's wet dreams) give them MS type control of web content. It has nothing to do with being a 'mac enthusiast'. It has to do with the integrity of the web.
The silly views about Flash expressed by many on this forum are quite a wake-up call for a Mac-enthusiast and Appleinsider lurker like myself - it becomes easier to see why so many find Mac enthusiasts so irritatingly smug.
Latching on to what Steve J says and then deluding yourself that it's your own viewpoint by focusing on some limited bit of personal experience should not be mistaken for an informed discussion about technology.
Please - for anyone actually interested in the pros/cons/future of Flash, Abster2core's link is a good starting point.
Having flash on the iphone doesn't necessarily mean having flash in a browser on the iphone.
My N95 has a flashlite 3 player that runs as an application so I can download and run flash movies outside of the browser environment. This is what I expect to become available for iphone. so all this talk about "nasty" flash ads is pointless. imho.
I've detected a lot of hostility about Flash in this forum. And, I agree that Flash is used in a system-resource-sucking, soliciting fashion that annoys. However, when used properly, it is an enjoyable and state-of-the-art experience. I admit that advertisers who abuse the functionality should be shot. That being said, I've used Flash for several years for work and personal projects, and find it to be enlightening and inspiring. Further, if we were to just look at Flash as a catalyst to future, more efficient, less annoying, and more controlled functionality, then Flash was useful, regardless of its current state. So, if the issue of Flash being a resource-hog is the inspiration for a new animation software that is more efficient, and CONTROLLED, then I'm all for it. The big picture here is innovation, and one cannot deny the fact that almost all creations lately were as a result of/were built upon earlier ideas. Otherwise, Moore's Law would be fallacious. Given the right opportunity, I think someone out there will find a way to create a middle-of-the-road solution to satisfy the "purity of the device" camp, and the "animation lovers" camp.
In my opinion, this is a great test of the control v. (developer) community dynamics that will continue to play out as Apple tries to build a mainstream platform; namely, secure developer ecosystem love while maintaining the high performance bar that they have established with the iPhone/iPod touch family of devices.
In that respect, it is somewhat of a three dimensional chess game unfolding, something I blogged about in, ?The Scorpion, the Frog and the iPhone SDK.?
Latching on to what Steve J says and then deluding yourself that it's your own viewpoint by focusing on some limited bit of personal experience should not be mistaken for an informed discussion about technology.
As for being "churlish and anticompetitive", OMG have you looked at Microsoft at any point in the past two decades? I work with their server tools every day. Trust me, they haven't made a single move in that time that wasn't wrapped around some competitive strategy or another.
I quite agree with you, I don't like what Microsoft does either. But imagine the uproar if they tried to say "we don't think QuickTime gives a good user experience, so we've decided to block the download of .mov files at the transport level". Ok, that's a daft and contrived example, but the point is one shouldn't put up with Apple artificially restricting what one can do any more than one would tolerate Microsoft or anyone else doing the same thing.
If that SDK license restriction is simply Apple covering their back, reserving the right to block any badly behaving apps that try to use scripting or plug-ins as some sort of back door to circumvent restrictions on what they're supposed to do, fair enough. But if it was put in explicitly and specifically to stop technologies like Java or Flash out of spite then that's an appalling and intolerable decision on Apple's part, and they'll deserve all the bad publicity they get if it ever goes to court or attracts the attention of the EC or DOJ.
Some of the new functionality in HTML, like the new features in Safari 3.1 which will certainly be on the iPhone, is making Flash irrelevant.
Not true. When you look at something like Flash, you need to think in terms of existing universe of Flash-powered content and applications and ecosystems of developers that have committed to the platform. Whether Safari adds Flash-like capabilities is orthogonal to those two realities.
Agree in part. I just can't see any reason why Apple would us it, as yet.
I think that there are too many who just wouldn't comprehend the choice, causing more dissension from ignorance as seen in many of the arguments posted here.
First of all, I have to say that AI seems to be very slow today.
But as for Flash:
I have to go back to Job's statements again. He made it very clear that the reason why Flash is not on the phone is because the appropriate software is not available. That was very clear. Flash Lite, he said, in response to a question, was not useful, as it doesn't play most Flash web applets.
There are people now, who are confused with the iPhone. I don't expect that to change. Flash could be turned off by default. however it is done, it will be done.
I agree with the article you linked to. It seems obvious that it is exactly what is going on.
I also agree with the part of the last paragraph from it, which I quote below:
Quote:
Although there are many who would like Flash to just go away, because it?s not open source, not free, and tends to be used to bombard us with annoying banner ads and horrible interface design models, Flash is not going away anytime soon. However, how Apple and Adobe navigate the uncharted territory of merging mobile and desktop user experiences along with multi-touch interfaces, will certainly determine the relevance of Flash in the years to come.
I've been thinking about how Sun and Adobe could follow the SDK regulations and still offer us Java and Flash. The solution I see Adobe using is to create Flash for the iPhone and use the WebKit engine that is available to any home brew apps that you wish.
For Flash, this would mean that you'll have two web browsers on you iDevice: the orignal Safari and the new version built by Adobe with the FVM and the Apple supplied WebKit, but with 9 home screens and the ability to alter the 4 main icons, this won't be an issue... though I'm sure someone will complain.
Java is a little tougher for Sun as any apps that wish to use the JVM will require the developer to input it into each app. Though, this task can be made to be a simple cut and paste with easy to follow directions. These foregoes Sun and Adobe getting special permission from Apple to go against the SDK rules as these are not plug-in solutions and won't require these VMs to run in the background.
PS: There may be other ways, but this is the one I can think of. If way off base please feel free to inform me.
PPS: I just can't wait until the debate over the usefulness of Flash begins in this thread. I'm glad I have the day off.
People are making a big deal over nothing here.
If Sun and Adobe offer software such as they have here, Apple might very well decide to make it a part of the platform.
Apple has not said that in the future, the apps, and plug-ins, THEY offer wouldn't take advantage of all the niceties they aren't giving third party developers.
You can not be serious. Can you dynamically turn Flash on or off now in Safari? Uh, yeah, I didn't think so.
Oh, please!
just because you haven't been given that ability now, doesn't mean that it can;t be offered in the future.
After all, Netscape Communicator, long ago, had the ability to remove, or turn off plug-ins.
There is no reason why it can't be done now. When Netscape was initiating the new web standards (and stupidly gave them away), computers, and the web, were much slower than both are today, so turning off plug-ins that slowed down the experience was required. As things sped up, that need went away, for the most part.
But, with mobile, it may be back. There is no technical impediment to turning off plug-ins.
Quote:
What people hate about Flash is the "apps" tend to be ads, the software is bloated and puts the CPU in overdrive mode killing battery life and running the fans at full bore. For the 5% of Flash that adds any value the other 95% is pure crap.
That's a jaundiced opinion, and I don't care about it. I ignore those ads. It's not difficult to do.
Mobile devices don't have the real estate that other machines do. most of the time, those ads will be off screen. I'm not concerned.
If Adobe is any clever they will implement Flash like QuickTime is implemented now:
Any QuickTime content embedded in a web page doesn't start to download and play right away. Instead you get a little 'Play' triangle in the bottom right corner. When you tap on it, the stand-alone QuickTime player opens and plays the movie.
Now imagine Flash content done the same way. No Flash ad gets downloaded and run right away, but you have the option of tapping on a little 'Play' icon to view it in the stand-alone Flash player.
Best of both worlds!
Those who don't want to be bombarded with Flash content, simply don't tap on the Flash 'Play' buttons. And those who do want to see it can. Selectively.
And since the 'Play' button merely launches another application, it should be easier to implement than any in-line Flash player inside Safari.
If Adobe is any clever they will implement Flash like QuickTime is implemented now:
Any QuickTime content embedded in a web page doesn't start to download and play right away. Instead you get a little 'Play' triangle in the bottom right corner. When you tap on it, the stand-alone QuickTime player opens and plays the movie.
Now imagine Flash content done the same way. No Flash ad gets downloaded and run right away, but you have the option of tapping on a little 'Play' icon to view it in the stand-alone Flash player.
Best of both worlds!
Those who don't want to be bombarded with Flash content, simply don't tap on the Flash 'Play' buttons. And those who do want to see it can. Selectively.
And since the 'Play' button merely launches another application, it should be easier to implement than any in-line Flash player inside Safari.
Flash video can also be set to not auto-start and many quasi new sites set it up that way. The issue is with advertisers whose goal is to be in your face and flashy. Having you turn on the ad just doesn't for that model; probably for the same reason we don't have a Commercial Channel on our cable TV.
Quicktime can be set to auto-start and I don't know if any browser setting to disallow that option, though it wouldn't be hard to implement.
The issue is with advertisers whose goal is to be in your face and flashy. Having you turn on the ad just doesn't for that model
Good point.
Apple might still just get away with it, though. With a total browser market share of about 0.23% for mobile Safari (iPhone and iPod touch combined) I don't think many advertisers will complain about their Flash ads not auto-playing on these devices.
And by the time the iPhone platform reaches a much bigger market share the CPU will be much more powerful too and perhaps can handle auto-playing Flash.
Quote:
Flash video can also be set to not auto-start
Yeah, but not Flash ads... At least I don't know of a way to deactivate ads auto-playing on my Safari/Mac. Right-clicking -> 'Settings...' is grayed out.
But if you know of a way, please let me know!
On an iPhone it would be great to have all those ads available on a per case basis if I want to watch them, but not have them auto-play straight away. Especially if I'm on data-roaming!
Not true. When you look at something like Flash, you need to think in terms of existing universe of Flash-powered content and applications and ecosystems of developers that have committed to the platform. Whether Safari adds Flash-like capabilities is orthogonal to those two realities.
Mark
But that's kinda the point.
The antagonism towards Flash is precisely because environment such as the iPhone are being forced to support non-standards-based (i.e. proprietary) things like Flash just because it has an installed base that has 'committed to the platform'. That's their problem, not that of the internet community that wants open standards, not proprietary traps.
Comments
Latching on to what Steve J says and then deluding yourself that it's your own viewpoint by focusing on some limited bit of personal experience should not be mistaken for an informed discussion about technology.
Please - for anyone actually interested in the pros/cons/future of Flash, Abster2core's link is a good starting point.
http://www.mercurious.com/wordpress/...one-and-flash/
Tell that to Steve Job's buddies over at Nike that have a "flash only" store.
Which proves what? That they chose to use a proprietary format to sell their idiotically priced (and kid-mugging-causing) shoes?
My point is that calling a proprietary format 'synonymous with the internet experience' is bulls**t and has to be called out on that.
So when I use my browser, (Safari) it won't work, but they're going to build me a new browser that does use flash and work?
Anyone else think Apple will really go along with this?
I see nothing in the SDK that would prevent them from allowing it. WebKit is freely available and built into the SDK for easy access, it isn't a plugin that would have to run as a separate app in background, and to prevent others from creating a legitimate web browser in favour of your built-in browser would be a legal issue.
This is the only possibility I can see for Flash to show up under the current SDK guidelines, but if you have a different scenario in mind please post it as I'm just speculating here.
The silly views about Flash expressed by many on this forum are quite a wake-up call for a Mac-enthusiast and Appleinsider lurker like myself - it becomes easier to see why so many find Mac enthusiasts so irritatingly smug.
Latching on to what Steve J says and then deluding yourself that it's your own viewpoint by focusing on some limited bit of personal experience should not be mistaken for an informed discussion about technology.
Please - for anyone actually interested in the pros/cons/future of Flash, Abster2core's link is a good starting point.
http://www.mercurious.com/wordpress/...one-and-flash/
Flash is a proprietary format designed to hijack web standards (and in Adobe's wet dreams) give them MS type control of web content. It has nothing to do with being a 'mac enthusiast'. It has to do with the integrity of the web.
The silly views about Flash expressed by many on this forum are quite a wake-up call for a Mac-enthusiast and Appleinsider lurker like myself - it becomes easier to see why so many find Mac enthusiasts so irritatingly smug.
Latching on to what Steve J says and then deluding yourself that it's your own viewpoint by focusing on some limited bit of personal experience should not be mistaken for an informed discussion about technology.
Please - for anyone actually interested in the pros/cons/future of Flash, Abster2core's link is a good starting point.
http://www.mercurious.com/wordpress/...one-and-flash/
I think the way people love FireFox for being able to disable flash, shows that your view against concerns about flash are.... well.... rather silly.
My N95 has a flashlite 3 player that runs as an application so I can download and run flash movies outside of the browser environment. This is what I expect to become available for iphone. so all this talk about "nasty" flash ads is pointless. imho.
In that respect, it is somewhat of a three dimensional chess game unfolding, something I blogged about in, ?The Scorpion, the Frog and the iPhone SDK.?
Check it out if interested:
http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2...orpion-th.html
Cheers,
Mark
Latching on to what Steve J says and then deluding yourself that it's your own viewpoint by focusing on some limited bit of personal experience should not be mistaken for an informed discussion about technology.
http://www.mercurious.com/wordpress/...one-and-flash/
And when Steve changes his story again like he did with video iPods and switching to Intel chips, what happens to those "latchers"?
As for being "churlish and anticompetitive", OMG have you looked at Microsoft at any point in the past two decades? I work with their server tools every day. Trust me, they haven't made a single move in that time that wasn't wrapped around some competitive strategy or another.
I quite agree with you, I don't like what Microsoft does either. But imagine the uproar if they tried to say "we don't think QuickTime gives a good user experience, so we've decided to block the download of .mov files at the transport level". Ok, that's a daft and contrived example, but the point is one shouldn't put up with Apple artificially restricting what one can do any more than one would tolerate Microsoft or anyone else doing the same thing.
If that SDK license restriction is simply Apple covering their back, reserving the right to block any badly behaving apps that try to use scripting or plug-ins as some sort of back door to circumvent restrictions on what they're supposed to do, fair enough. But if it was put in explicitly and specifically to stop technologies like Java or Flash out of spite then that's an appalling and intolerable decision on Apple's part, and they'll deserve all the bad publicity they get if it ever goes to court or attracts the attention of the EC or DOJ.
Some of the new functionality in HTML, like the new features in Safari 3.1 which will certainly be on the iPhone, is making Flash irrelevant.
Not true. When you look at something like Flash, you need to think in terms of existing universe of Flash-powered content and applications and ecosystems of developers that have committed to the platform. Whether Safari adds Flash-like capabilities is orthogonal to those two realities.
Mark
Agree in part. I just can't see any reason why Apple would us it, as yet.
I think that there are too many who just wouldn't comprehend the choice, causing more dissension from ignorance as seen in many of the arguments posted here.
Although this article (http://www.mercurious.com/wordpress/...one-and-flash/) was published last August, it does appear to have some relevance. Perhaps Melgross you could give your take on it.
First of all, I have to say that AI seems to be very slow today.
But as for Flash:
I have to go back to Job's statements again. He made it very clear that the reason why Flash is not on the phone is because the appropriate software is not available. That was very clear. Flash Lite, he said, in response to a question, was not useful, as it doesn't play most Flash web applets.
There are people now, who are confused with the iPhone. I don't expect that to change. Flash could be turned off by default. however it is done, it will be done.
I agree with the article you linked to. It seems obvious that it is exactly what is going on.
I also agree with the part of the last paragraph from it, which I quote below:
Although there are many who would like Flash to just go away, because it?s not open source, not free, and tends to be used to bombard us with annoying banner ads and horrible interface design models, Flash is not going away anytime soon. However, how Apple and Adobe navigate the uncharted territory of merging mobile and desktop user experiences along with multi-touch interfaces, will certainly determine the relevance of Flash in the years to come.
I've been thinking about how Sun and Adobe could follow the SDK regulations and still offer us Java and Flash. The solution I see Adobe using is to create Flash for the iPhone and use the WebKit engine that is available to any home brew apps that you wish.
For Flash, this would mean that you'll have two web browsers on you iDevice: the orignal Safari and the new version built by Adobe with the FVM and the Apple supplied WebKit, but with 9 home screens and the ability to alter the 4 main icons, this won't be an issue... though I'm sure someone will complain.
Java is a little tougher for Sun as any apps that wish to use the JVM will require the developer to input it into each app. Though, this task can be made to be a simple cut and paste with easy to follow directions. These foregoes Sun and Adobe getting special permission from Apple to go against the SDK rules as these are not plug-in solutions and won't require these VMs to run in the background.
PS: There may be other ways, but this is the one I can think of. If way off base please feel free to inform me.
PPS: I just can't wait until the debate over the usefulness of Flash begins in this thread. I'm glad I have the day off.
People are making a big deal over nothing here.
If Sun and Adobe offer software such as they have here, Apple might very well decide to make it a part of the platform.
Apple has not said that in the future, the apps, and plug-ins, THEY offer wouldn't take advantage of all the niceties they aren't giving third party developers.
You can not be serious. Can you dynamically turn Flash on or off now in Safari? Uh, yeah, I didn't think so.
Oh, please!
just because you haven't been given that ability now, doesn't mean that it can;t be offered in the future.
After all, Netscape Communicator, long ago, had the ability to remove, or turn off plug-ins.
There is no reason why it can't be done now. When Netscape was initiating the new web standards (and stupidly gave them away), computers, and the web, were much slower than both are today, so turning off plug-ins that slowed down the experience was required. As things sped up, that need went away, for the most part.
But, with mobile, it may be back. There is no technical impediment to turning off plug-ins.
What people hate about Flash is the "apps" tend to be ads, the software is bloated and puts the CPU in overdrive mode killing battery life and running the fans at full bore. For the 5% of Flash that adds any value the other 95% is pure crap.
That's a jaundiced opinion, and I don't care about it. I ignore those ads. It's not difficult to do.
Mobile devices don't have the real estate that other machines do. most of the time, those ads will be off screen. I'm not concerned.
Any QuickTime content embedded in a web page doesn't start to download and play right away. Instead you get a little 'Play' triangle in the bottom right corner. When you tap on it, the stand-alone QuickTime player opens and plays the movie.
Now imagine Flash content done the same way. No Flash ad gets downloaded and run right away, but you have the option of tapping on a little 'Play' icon to view it in the stand-alone Flash player.
Best of both worlds!
Those who don't want to be bombarded with Flash content, simply don't tap on the Flash 'Play' buttons. And those who do want to see it can. Selectively.
And since the 'Play' button merely launches another application, it should be easier to implement than any in-line Flash player inside Safari.
If Adobe is any clever they will implement Flash like QuickTime is implemented now:
Any QuickTime content embedded in a web page doesn't start to download and play right away. Instead you get a little 'Play' triangle in the bottom right corner. When you tap on it, the stand-alone QuickTime player opens and plays the movie.
Now imagine Flash content done the same way. No Flash ad gets downloaded and run right away, but you have the option of tapping on a little 'Play' icon to view it in the stand-alone Flash player.
Best of both worlds!
Those who don't want to be bombarded with Flash content, simply don't tap on the Flash 'Play' buttons. And those who do want to see it can. Selectively.
And since the 'Play' button merely launches another application, it should be easier to implement than any in-line Flash player inside Safari.
Flash video can also be set to not auto-start and many quasi new sites set it up that way. The issue is with advertisers whose goal is to be in your face and flashy. Having you turn on the ad just doesn't for that model; probably for the same reason we don't have a Commercial Channel on our cable TV.
Quicktime can be set to auto-start and I don't know if any browser setting to disallow that option, though it wouldn't be hard to implement.
The issue is with advertisers whose goal is to be in your face and flashy. Having you turn on the ad just doesn't for that model
Good point.
Apple might still just get away with it, though. With a total browser market share of about 0.23% for mobile Safari (iPhone and iPod touch combined) I don't think many advertisers will complain about their Flash ads not auto-playing on these devices.
And by the time the iPhone platform reaches a much bigger market share the CPU will be much more powerful too and perhaps can handle auto-playing Flash.
Flash video can also be set to not auto-start
Yeah, but not Flash ads... At least I don't know of a way to deactivate ads auto-playing on my Safari/Mac. Right-clicking -> 'Settings...' is grayed out.
But if you know of a way, please let me know!
On an iPhone it would be great to have all those ads available on a per case basis if I want to watch them, but not have them auto-play straight away. Especially if I'm on data-roaming!
Not true. When you look at something like Flash, you need to think in terms of existing universe of Flash-powered content and applications and ecosystems of developers that have committed to the platform. Whether Safari adds Flash-like capabilities is orthogonal to those two realities.
Mark
But that's kinda the point.
The antagonism towards Flash is precisely because environment such as the iPhone are being forced to support non-standards-based (i.e. proprietary) things like Flash just because it has an installed base that has 'committed to the platform'. That's their problem, not that of the internet community that wants open standards, not proprietary traps.