Adobe Flash fallout extends to TVs, RIM perseveres with PlayBook

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Adobe revealed Wednesday that its cancellation of Flash development on mobile devices will also extend to TV-related "digital home devices," while Research in Motion promised to continue in-house development of Flash for its PlayBook tablet.



The San Jose, Calif., software maker confirmed on Wednesday that it was ceasing development of its Flash Player for mobile browsers to instead focus on HTML5 and its Adobe AIR application platform. A spokesperson for Adobe indicated to GigaOm that the company will also no longer develop Flash Player for consumer electronics devices.



?Adobe will continue to support existing licensees who are planning on supporting Flash Player for web browsing on digital home devices and are using the Flash Player Porting Kit to do so," the spokesperson said.



"However we believe the right approach to deliver content on televisions is through applications, not a web browsing experience, and we will continue to encourage the device and content publishing community down that path.?



The news is a shift for Adobe, as the company had backed the Open Screen Project initiative to utilize Flash Player as part of a "consistent runtime environment" across desktops, mobile phones, televisions and other consumer electronics. TV makers, such as Samsung, had been slowly adding support for Flash to their connected TVs.



Google TV was also a primary partner in the effort to bring Flash Player into the living room. The Android maker is already working to improve its Google TV platform and reduce its reliance on Adobe Flash. Late last month, the company issued a major software update that brings more Android Market applications to Google TV in order to focus on native app-driven content.







PlayBook plays on



Research in Motion told AllThingsD in a statement that it would continue development of Adobe Flash Player for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in spite of Adobe's move away from it.



"As an Adobe source code licensee, we will continue to work on and release our own implementations. RIM remains committed to delivering an uncompromised Web browsing experience to our customers, including native support for Adobe Flash Player on our BlackBerry PlayBook tablet (similar to a desktop PC browser), as well as HTML5 support on both our BlackBerry smartphone and PlayBook browsers,? the company said, adding that it was "pleased" at Adobe's renewed focus on HTML5.



Adobe's abandonment of the mobile Flash Player could come as another nail in the coffin for the already struggling PlayBook. In September, RIM revealed that it had sold just 200,000 PlayBooks in the most recent quarter, less than two days' worth of Apple's iPad sales. Flash support has been touted by RIM as a significant advantage that the PlayBook had over Apple's iPad.







RIM is currently experiencing yet another service outage, though this one does not appear to be as widespread as a recent 4-day outage that sparked class action lawsuits. The BlackBerry platform also experienced another blow on Wednesday when rival Google announced plans to pull its native Gmail app from BlackBerry App World.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 35
    alfiejralfiejr Posts: 1,524member
    The RIM PlayBook is a total disaster. please, somebody pull the plug and put it out of its misery.



    RIM will go on the auction block in January after the co-CEO clowns running this sad show finally get the boot.
  • Reply 2 of 35
    RIM reminds me of a crew in a sinking canoe: the hole is getting bigger and more water is rushing in. The effort to continue Flash development on the PlayBook is like RIM yelling: "ROW FASTER!!!"
  • Reply 3 of 35
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Alfiejr View Post


    The RIM PlayBook is a total disaster. please, somebody pull the plug and put it out of its misery.



    RIM will go on the auction block in January after the co-CEO clowns running this sad show finally get the boot.



    Are you kidding?¡ The PlayBook is great, it just needs more Flash like that SNL skit needed more cowbell¡
  • Reply 4 of 35
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post


    RIM reminds me of a crew in a sinking canoe: the hole is getting bigger and more water is rushing in. The effort to continue Flash development on the PlayBook is like RIM yelling: "ROW FASTER!!!"



    "RiM's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man."
  • Reply 5 of 35
    When I heard this on Bloomberg today, I laughed for a solid 2-3 minutes. And then I couldn't keep myself from chuckling on & off for another 15 minutes. When I bought my girlfriend an iPad 2 earlier this year, I mentioned it to a few friends (some of whom are anti-Apple types) and they said, "you could have at least given her something that would run Flash."



    Geniuses! Yes, I absolutely should have bought her a Play(dead)Book or an Android Cupcake, which would run Flash maybe 40% of the time without crashing or going wonky.
  • Reply 6 of 35
    alfiejralfiejr Posts: 1,524member
    And as to Google and its utterly ill-conceived Google TV, it's back to the Motorola drawing boards. Really, Adobe did it a favor. someone had to tell them. how about a Google "smart cable box"? about a year from now.
  • Reply 7 of 35
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post


    RIM reminds me of a crew in a sinking canoe: the hole is getting bigger and more water is rushing in. The effort to continue Flash development on the PlayBook is like RIM yelling: "ROW FASTER!!!"



    "Apple is like a sinking ship? and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction."
  • Reply 8 of 35
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    "Apple is like a sinking ship? and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction."



    Ahhh yes, they are going broke aren't they.
  • Reply 9 of 35
    cpsrocpsro Posts: 3,192member
    Definition of RIM job
  • Reply 10 of 35
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    "Apple is like a sinking ship? and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction."



    Now you've done it. Please don't give RIM any more false hope.
  • Reply 11 of 35
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by rkevwill View Post


    Ahhh yes, they are going broke aren't they.



    They've managed to sell more units and stay profitable while also increasing their net profit since Apple changed the game, but they are losing ground and growing much slower than the market as a whole. That's not good and spells an inevitable doom for the company if they can't turn it out around, hence the sinking ship metaphor, not sunken ship. That said, I think rudderless might be a better fit.
  • Reply 12 of 35
    And just like that, Adobe just killed Tivo's entire development platform.
  • Reply 13 of 35
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Alfiejr View Post


    And as to Google and its utterly ill-conceived Google TV, it's back to the Motorola drawing boards. Really, Adobe did it a favor. someone had to tell them. how about a Google "smart cable box"? about a year from now.



    The Google TV concept and software is fine - it really doesn't need Flash since the version 2.0 release - with Android app support - a couple of weeks ago . What it does need is more content providers. And decent hardware. I don't think there's any doubt that it will be built into Motorola's STBs next year.
  • Reply 14 of 35


    Last one out... Flush the Flash!



  • Reply 15 of 35
    Quote:

    RIM remains committed to delivering an uncompromised Web browsing experience to our customers, including native support for Adobe Flash Player on our BlackBerry PlayBook tablet (similar to a desktop PC browser), as well as HTML5 support on both our BlackBerry smartphone and PlayBook browsers,]



    To bad RIM wasn't committed enough to put out an updates OS that included a built in e-mail client. But thank god they are gonna continue trying to give the few people that bought their tablet a crappy Flash experience.
  • Reply 16 of 35
    So entertaining. I'm glad they left the page up.
  • Reply 17 of 35
    wingswings Posts: 261member
    My new 2011 Charger came with its owner's manual on CD. It required AIR to view it, so I downloaded it. While viewing a STATIC page in the manual, AIR had one core of 8 running at 100%. Just to view text. So how is AIR any different than Flash? (And yes, I removed AIR and got a printed manual.)
  • Reply 18 of 35
    My Tivo Premier's HD menus are written in Flash, and I had to turn them off because they were so buggy and tended to lock up. They were nice looking and had some additional features, but were totally worthless due to the bugginess of Flash.



    I switched back to the old SD menus and haven't had a problem since.
  • Reply 19 of 35
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mac.World View Post


    To bad RIM wasn't committed enough to put out an updates OS that included a built in e-mail client. But thank god they are gonna continue trying to give the few people that bought their tablet a crappy Flash experience.



    That's my favorite part, too. What RIM fails to realize is that this is only the beginning of the end for Flash as a content delivery tool. It will continue as a platform for building cross device apps, but I have a feeling that in two years, Flash will not be on "84% of the leading wrbsites"
  • Reply 20 of 35
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Wings View Post


    My new 2011 Charger came with its owner's manual on CD. It required AIR to view it, so I downloaded it. While viewing a STATIC page in the manual, AIR had one core of 8 running at 100%. Just to view text. So how is AIR any different than Flash? (And yes, I removed AIR and got a printed manual.)



    AIR is Flash. It's just a way of packaging the runtime with the Flash content so you can run it as a standalone application.



    So AIR isn't any 'better' than Flash Player in the browser except for the fact that you can't embed it into a webpage, so it's much easier to deliberately ignore. This fact alone will hopefully also mean that all the hordes of graphic designers, artists and amateur web developers who call themselves 'programmers' because they can hack something together in Flash, will stay away from content that you'd actually want to see.



    Remember that Flash itself isn't even THAT terrible if properly used. The biggest problem with Flash has always been that 90% of Flash 'developers' are incompetent and incapable of writing efficient Flash code. Really nice and efficient Flash applications do exist. With a native toolkit like Objective-C + Cocoa at least you have some barrier of entrance to develop applications, resulting in a much higher average quality of applications.
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