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Thoughts on Flash

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Re: Thoughts on Flash

#271

Post by potatolicious »

tomlin wrote: post #226
Zev wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delays Your link makes it seem like an evangelist is playing loosely with words; "available for download" could simply mean beta/RC status, not ready for release everywhere. Battery Life From your link: The results are amazing: I can watch a 4 hours and a half flash movie, without interruption, with a bright screen (no sleep mode) and sound !!! From Steve Jobs post: The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for examp…

It is true that some of these links are from evangelists. But we're not saying Steve Jobs is neutral are we? Battery Life: It's a bit of hyperbole. We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours. Would it matter if Flash could play videos for 11 hours? It is a misdirection or a sidestep of an original claim that Flash would kill the iPhone inside of 2 hours. Touch/Scroll: Another sidestep. A Flash issue? With that…

> "We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours."

We do other things on the iPhone. I don't want to make the choice between watching a video and then restricting my own usage just so my phone has enough juice to make a call. I'd rather watch videos and use my phone, and the more power efficient everything is, the more the user can do this.

To put it in perspective, if Apple's numbers are to be believed, running Flash alone doubles the power consumption of the device. That's insane.

> "With that I answer: a:hover {}"

a:hover is no longer (it certainly used to be) a common tool used for site navigation. Which is to say, rollover dropdown menus are out like parachute pants - it's a non-issue on the web today. Just about every site works with "clicks", which is Apple's primary form of interaction with websites on touch devices.

The most compelling argument made though we've already been aware of for some time: cross-platform toolkits encourage lowest common denominator design. In Apple's world of pixel-perfect mockups and obsessive attention to detail this is abhorrent - and I'm inclined to agree. The iPhone's chief strength is its remarkably polished user interface - which for the most part remains true across its 3rd party app sphere, thanks in no small part to Apple's obsessive HID enforcement.

A Flash-compiled-to-iPhone app destroys this in the same way that a Linux Qt app hastily ported to Windows is the same.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#272

Post by pohl »

cninja wrote: post #222
danudey wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point 1 is talking about websites / web applications. Point 5 is talking about native apps. Two different domains entirely. With point 1, if developers are going to make a website, and they ditch flash, their work would work everywhere well (iPhone/iPad/iPod, Android, WebOS, Symbian, and Blackberry OS 6, as well as on the desktop). They wouldn't be limited to the platforms Adobe decides to support (or decides to supp…

I do understand your point about using the right tool for the right job, however Apple is arguing both sides. Either cross platform standards are a good thing, or platform specific features are a good thing. While web applications and native applications are different domains, they are not different enough to mean different reasoning can be used. An end user doesn't really care if something is built using HTML5, flas…

Either cross platform standards are a good thing, or platform specific features are a good thing.

This is the classic fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses of the 2nd order, a.k.a. "a false dichotomy" or "the fallacy of the excluded middle".

There is a third possibilty: that both are good, and that which is better depends upon the nature of the app one wants to create. This third missing case also happens to be the reality of the situation — there are tradeoffs, and one selects which is better according to the upsides that one desires versus the downsides one is willing to abide.

(Surely you're not claiming that there are no tradeoffs between the native API and web technologies! I can think of several, not the least of which is the limited rate at which innovation can be brought to the web API.)

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#273

Post by potatolicious »

tomlin wrote: post #201
gaius wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apples position is that proprietary implementations of open standards is the way to go (tho' of course WebKit is completely open).

Thought: Proprietary isn't bad. Open isn't great. Proprietary vs. open is bad. Proprietary + open is great. Proprietary implementations are a (sometimes) necessary interstitial step towards great open implementations. Save the "VS." narrative for Street Fighter II.

> "Proprietary implementations are a (sometimes) necessary interstitial step towards great open implementations."

True, but Flash is a closed standard with a closed implementation. Adobe likes to claim it is open - but the fact remains that not only is it impossible to write an open implementation of their incomplete spec, but Adobe has actively sought to keep core components proprietary even in spec and prevent competing implementations.

That's the part that irks me about Adobe's role in this issue - they're playing themselves and Flash off as this open savior of the web when they've actively been evil in that regard. If you're closed, great, do your thing; if you're open, then actually open your spec - don't open part of it and then go after the other half with lawyers.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#274

Post by heimidal »

tomlin wrote: post #226
Zev wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delays Your link makes it seem like an evangelist is playing loosely with words; "available for download" could simply mean beta/RC status, not ready for release everywhere. Battery Life From your link: The results are amazing: I can watch a 4 hours and a half flash movie, without interruption, with a bright screen (no sleep mode) and sound !!! From Steve Jobs post: The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for examp…

It is true that some of these links are from evangelists. But we're not saying Steve Jobs is neutral are we? Battery Life: It's a bit of hyperbole. We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours. Would it matter if Flash could play videos for 11 hours? It is a misdirection or a sidestep of an original claim that Flash would kill the iPhone inside of 2 hours. Touch/Scroll: Another sidestep. A Flash issue? With that…

When it comes to battery life, you must consider the affect on the total user experience.

If the iPhone can play video for 10 hours, that means a 2 hour movie brings my battery life to 80%.

If the iPhone could play Flash video for 5 hours and I watch a 2 hour movie, my battery life is reduced to 60%.

Given other things I do with my phone battery life is important beyond "how much video can I watch?" If the repercussions of watching a two-hour video are so much less severe, I am more likely to watch the video in question knowing I won't wind up with a dead phone after a half day of traveling.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#275

Post by telemachos »

tomlin wrote: post #201
gaius wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apples position is that proprietary implementations of open standards is the way to go (tho' of course WebKit is completely open).

Thought: Proprietary isn't bad. Open isn't great. Proprietary vs. open is bad. Proprietary + open is great. Proprietary implementations are a (sometimes) necessary interstitial step towards great open implementations. Save the "VS." narrative for Street Fighter II.

I'm not flaming, trolling or baiting, but I am curious: under what circumstances do you think proprietary implementations are necessary?

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#276

Post by [deleted] »

tomlin wrote: post #226
Zev wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delays Your link makes it seem like an evangelist is playing loosely with words; "available for download" could simply mean beta/RC status, not ready for release everywhere. Battery Life From your link: The results are amazing: I can watch a 4 hours and a half flash movie, without interruption, with a bright screen (no sleep mode) and sound !!! From Steve Jobs post: The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for examp…

It is true that some of these links are from evangelists. But we're not saying Steve Jobs is neutral are we? Battery Life: It's a bit of hyperbole. We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours. Would it matter if Flash could play videos for 11 hours? It is a misdirection or a sidestep of an original claim that Flash would kill the iPhone inside of 2 hours. Touch/Scroll: Another sidestep. A Flash issue? With that…

[deleted]

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#277

Post by Psyonic »

dcurtis wrote: post #156
joshwa wrote: post #74

If they're going to pitch HTML5 as an alternative to Flash (and, implicitly, the iPhoneOS API), then why not let them compete directly with Cocoa Touch apps? Why not offer HTML5 developers a way to take advantage of the App Store's monetization and discoverability? Apple already provides some amazing documentation and tutorials for making offline-capable mobile web apps, but they're still treated by Apple as the bast…

Don't you remember that Apple was first trying to force everything on the iPhone to be done on the web?

We all remember, but they changed their minds and now fully embrace the app store, and even use it as a major marketing point. Suggesting we go back to it now is a bit pre-mature, I think. JS simply doesn't run comparably to native apps, so if they want to talk battery life, they should discuss it there as well.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#278

Post by cynicalkane »

billybob wrote: post #253
cynicalkane wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? The legal notion of "legal personhood" and actual personhood are not comparable, not even legally, and especially not in the context of the discussion at hand.

So, to recap, legally being a person and being a person aren't, legally, the same.

Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person

"This legal fiction does not mean these entities are human beings, but rather means that the law allows them to act as persons for certain limited purposes..." Emphasis mine.

This stuff isn't even on topic, but when people insist on insulting my intelligence with snide pseudo-logical comments, I will insist on correcting them.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#279

Post by prodigal_erik »

ianbishop wrote: post #38

If Jobs had provided this type of specific detail before releasing 3.3.1, we could have saved ourselves lots of blogspam.

He said developers (at least those at Apple's mercy) are required to use proprietary APIs, because only those have complete feature coverage. He didn't say they would be permitted to use modern programming languages, which is what most of us (other than those at Adobe's mercy) were offended by.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#280

Post by Psyonic »

crocowhile wrote: post #186
dcurtis wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple purposefully wrote Finder in clean Carbon as an example to developers, to prove that it was possible to make good cross-platform software. iTunes was also written very carefully -- and very cleanly -- in Carbon to be cross-platform. Adobe, however, hacked Creative Suite into Carbon with buggy, inefficient code and then took 10 years -- ten years -- to schedule the time to fix it.

Have you ever used itunes on pc? It sucks. Almost as much as flash.

It's true. Its fine on my MBP, but I can't stand it on Windows. It feels sluggish on a quad core processor. How that is even possible I don't know, but it does.
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