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Thoughts on Flash

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Re: Thoughts on Flash

#31

Post by jiaaro »

lftl wrote: post #12
ThomPete wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called control over the experience something that really shouldn't be a surprise for Jobs. There are literally millions of experiences out there that can't be done with HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. if you want proof, go to theFWA.com and have a look around. For every bad flash solution out there, there are some quite fantastic ones. Flash gives you control of the experience in ways that by any metrics outcompete H…

There are literally millions of experiences out there that can't be done with HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. if you want proof, go to theFWA.com and have a look around. I don't disagree with your general premise about flash offering more robust design control, and it's possible I didn't look around enough on the site, but I didn't see anything on thefwa.com that you couldn't handle with a HTML5, CSS, and JS (heck, I didn…

I would argue that dropping in gordon for a site like theFWA.com would easily solve the problem... seeing how everything they're donig with flash can easily be done with plain javascript

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#32

Post by betageek »

I don't buy this at all, although some of the reasoning is sound there's some jaw-dropping rubbish in this statement. esp. around 'openess'. This is one big red herring - Adobe pissed Jobs off, this is his revenge, end of story.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#33

Post by not_an_alien »

ugh wrote: post #15
ryoshu wrote: post #9

It's interesting to see Steve Jobs on the FUD side of things. On the upside, at least Apple has now officially addressed the conflict. Kudos for that.

Which arguments are FUD?

* Flash websites will have to be rewritten because it relies on 'rollovers', which is not part of Apple's 'revolutionary' touch interface: overblown for two reasons - a) few stuff will have to be rewritten (many videos show desktop Flash content working on mobile phones without a problem); and b) this is not a problem with Flash, as any JS/HTML-based interface that relies on rollovers has the same issues.

* Flash is 'closed and proprietary': Flash is as 'closed and proprietary' as many of the technologies he's trying to portray as open, if not less. H264 is not open. Objective+C++ is not open. Flash (SWF) has a fully published spec and anyone can write tools to create, or play, SWF content, without royalties, or without having to respond to any entity.

* Adobe only wants cross-platform apps, not good apps; generic subjective bullshit.

* Comparing video decompression versus hardware decompression battery gains and claiming that's an advantage over Flash: bullshit, since Flash uses video decompression in most cases.

* Saying Adobe postponed the release dates of Flash 10.1 for smartphones: bullshit. He's repeating a story that has already been corrected on a number of places (that Flash's release was pushed to 2nd half of 2010) as fact. That he's ignoring the fact that the story was misinterpreted by one source, and simply repeating the wrong news, is staggering. FP is still bound for a release in the 1st half of 2010.

* Saying "Adobe has recently added support for h264 playback": gee, I guess 2.5 years is "recently"? h264 support was added with FP 9.0.115, released in December 2007.

There's a lot more, but it tends to get tiring to constantly dispel the most obvious FUD written for the general public and full of misinformation. Mactards will believe whatever they want to believe, so hey... I'll just let the platform speak for itself. In 5 years, let's see how well Apple narrow mindedness business decisions work out for them.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#34

Post by emontero1 »

"We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash."

I can attest to the veracity of this statement. My MBP's processor spikes whenever I get on YouTube or any other Flash-based site. I've had a couple of major crashes on both Firefox and Chrome while using Flash. I've also heard other users express similar views with these and other browsers on Ubuntu.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#35

Post by greendestiny »

tumult wrote: post #11

More good news about 3.3.1 "must write in C, Objective-C or C++" clause: it's made even more obvious here that Apple only cares about commercial middleware UI-driven applications. Those of us with custom toolkits and compilers (and games developers) can probably relax. Though, I wish they would still change the wording. I dislike having to wait for my friend's cat to click the "I Agree" button, since I cannot actuall…

Well 3.3.1 is worded poorly then, you'd think their legal team could do better if they just wanted to stop Adobe. Its pretty explicit about banning other languages.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#36

Post by yan »

ThomPete wrote: post #21

There are so many things wrong with Jobs explanation I don't know where to begin. But two claims really pisses me off. Battery Life If I activate push notification it sure isn't nice to my battery. So I switch it off. The same thing could be done with flash. Or even better, make flash an opt in. What's the problem. Yes I know apple can claim that it will affect peoples impression of their products, but so do not havi…

I don't understand why you reacted so strongly to the roll over argument. Jobs didn't state roll overs as the raison d'etre for not including Flash, he simply used it as yet another example why the tools and, more importantly, thinking of the previous generation of web developers will not advance the platform forward. (As an example, I have been frustrated at some sites reliance of roll overs when using my iPhone).

The battery life argument is also stronger than you make it seem. When users turn on push notifications, the phone warns you of a reduced battery life (also, when enabling 3G) and is usually not toggled by the majority of the population. Flash is much more insidious; it will live in the browser and to the average user, will just be a part of normal browsing. Ditto for watching movies over flash.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#39

Post by marknutter »

ThomPete wrote: post #21

There are so many things wrong with Jobs explanation I don't know where to begin. But two claims really pisses me off. Battery Life If I activate push notification it sure isn't nice to my battery. So I switch it off. The same thing could be done with flash. Or even better, make flash an opt in. What's the problem. Yes I know apple can claim that it will affect peoples impression of their products, but so do not havi…

Making flash opt-in wouldn't solve the problem. The VAST majority of non-technical users will not know about or use that setting and will blame Apple for the poor battery life, not Adobe. It's a lot about saving face here. Apple wants to be in control of their own success, which becomes hard to do when you're allowing proprietary technologies to run on their hardware. Jobs points out his frustration with Adobe taking so long to adopt Cocoa - this is just him trying to avoid a similar situation on the iPhone.

Speak for yourself about the lack of flash on the iPad, I consider it a feature on mine. 90% of the videos I run across on the web on my iPad are youtube or vimeo videos and work perfectly.

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