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Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

blog.laptopmag.com

41–50 of 194 posts

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#41

I wasn't aware that the sole reason for flash was to playback high-def video. It's just a runtime. Make stuff that runs on the platform for that runtime. JavaME will choke on most Desktop Java apps as well. The moral of the story is, do mobile things on mobile devices and desktop things on desktops.

This would be true if the iPhone wasn't such an awesome video playback device.

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#42
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, it's a fracking mobile phone you are holding in the palm of your hand and you want it to be as powerful as a desktop experience? Reality check! My iPhone 3G's processor is faster than one of my laptops (that I used on a daily basis, but recently retired it due to buying a new Starling Netbook). You're damn right it better perform just as well!

Your iPhone's processor may have a larger number representing its clock, but your laptop's processor is likely much faster. You can't compare different CPU architectures by the number of hz. Desktop (=laptop in this case) processors are out-of-order power-sucking beasts compared to the power sipping CPU in your phone and other devices. Watts vs. milliwatts in comparison.

You are correct. But I did want to mention that I'm running an old iPhone...two generations old by now. I imagine that the newer iOS and Andriod phones are indeed comparable in speed to a decent but not top-of-the-line laptop.

I see nothing wrong with assuming that your phone should be able to handle laptop-like web media functions, such as watching video and playing audio or games.

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#44
post #27

For the record, the article's comments are full of people saying that their experiences have been very different.

Flash works fine on my android phone. At least as far as I know. I almost never have a reason to use it.

I have flash on my N1 too (froyo), but it's definitely noticeable when the webpage has flash on it -- even when it's a tiny flash ad somewhere. Scrolling the webpage becomes really choppy -- sometimes I wish I could disable all flash except for when it's used for video.

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#45
post #44
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash works fine on my android phone. At least as far as I know. I almost never have a reason to use it.

I have flash on my N1 too (froyo), but it's definitely noticeable when the webpage has flash on it -- even when it's a tiny flash ad somewhere. Scrolling the webpage becomes really choppy -- sometimes I wish I could disable all flash except for when it's used for video.

Check the browser settings. Set "Enable plug-ins" to "On demand". It's basically the same as Flashblock.

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#46
post #44
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash works fine on my android phone. At least as far as I know. I almost never have a reason to use it.

I have flash on my N1 too (froyo), but it's definitely noticeable when the webpage has flash on it -- even when it's a tiny flash ad somewhere. Scrolling the webpage becomes really choppy -- sometimes I wish I could disable all flash except for when it's used for video.

uhm.. yes you can.. and i think that's the only thing to do when you want to have a decent webbrowsing and flash experience. In the browser options you can disable plugins. You'll have to press the area of the plugin to make videos and games work, then. Disables all those flash ads, though.

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#47
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, it's a fracking mobile phone you are holding in the palm of your hand and you want it to be as powerful as a desktop experience? Reality check! My iPhone 3G's processor is faster than one of my laptops (that I used on a daily basis, but recently retired it due to buying a new Starling Netbook). You're damn right it better perform just as well!

Your iPhone's processor may have a larger number representing its clock, but your laptop's processor is likely much faster. You can't compare different CPU architectures by the number of hz. Desktop (=laptop in this case) processors are out-of-order power-sucking beasts compared to the power sipping CPU in your phone and other devices. Watts vs. milliwatts in comparison.

Unscientific Python benchmark:

  t1=time.time(); x=[i*i for i in xrange(1000000)]; time.time()-t1
On my 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo iMac, this runs in 0.47 seconds. On my Nexus One (using the Python executable from Scripting Layer for Android), it takes around 3.8 seconds. So the N1 is around an eighth of the speed of the iMac (ignoring the C2D's second core), which is actually pretty impressive.

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#48
Said it before and I'll say it again: the only reason people wanted full desktop Flash on mobile devices was for the video. You can also s/video/porn if you're so inclined.

It's pretty telling that the first thing this guy tried out of the box was a bunch of video sites, not popcap or farmville.

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#49
post #39

Adobe is seriously doing it all wrong. They have to open-source the Flash Player and everything around it now. They can keep the IDE proprietary if that floats their boat, it's just a premium authoring tool, but the only way to save Flash is to open-source like NOW. HTML5 is still young enough that an open Flash Player and standard and protocol (RTMP) would effectively kill it. Open-sourcing would open so many doors.…

Flash player gives Adobe a lot of power and keeps their not so good dev/design tooos safe from competition. From what I've seen the current strategy is to try to add features not available in HTML5, like P2P. That would allow youtube and company to roll out torrent-based players and save hugely on bandwidth.

I doubt P2P could be used reliably for video streaming. There's a quality of service component of video streaming that P2P solutions can't currently provide effectively in the context of embedded web video streaming. Besides, YouTube probably doesn't cost very much bandwidth-wise. Google has dozens of datacenters placed at or near key peering locations where they can negotiate very low or zero tariff interconnects with major IP networks. At work on a Time-Warner fiber connection, I am 2 hops from Google's network.

Re: Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

#50
post #39

Adobe is seriously doing it all wrong. They have to open-source the Flash Player and everything around it now. They can keep the IDE proprietary if that floats their boat, it's just a premium authoring tool, but the only way to save Flash is to open-source like NOW. HTML5 is still young enough that an open Flash Player and standard and protocol (RTMP) would effectively kill it. Open-sourcing would open so many doors.…

Flash player gives Adobe a lot of power and keeps their not so good dev/design tooos safe from competition. From what I've seen the current strategy is to try to add features not available in HTML5, like P2P. That would allow youtube and company to roll out torrent-based players and save hugely on bandwidth.

Why couldn't you implement P2P in JavaScript? You'd have to work around browser sandboxing that prevents access to the disk, but you can do that by installing as an extension. I think a JS-based torrent client is reasonable.

"New features" is not a good answer; it might stave things off a bit longer, but the real problem in Flash is that Adobe is choking it to death and only really provides first-class support on Windows.

Only recently have they started taking even the Mac platform seriously, probably trying to prove to Apple that they should be included in the iOS devices. Support is still a complete mess on Linux (the basis of Android and countless other platforms and most new platforms, meaning that any day now a Linux-based platform could be the new hotness, supplanting the iPhone, and then we'll have to go through this whole song and dance again with Adobe pretending to take Linux seriously to try and trick people into letting Flash run on that platform with its 40% penetration), and their penguin.swf blog has nothing but excuses; sure, video on Linux may be less straightforward than video on Windows (because there is actual competition and you have to make a choice instead of taking whatever Microsoft decrees), but lots of people with far fewer resources have been able to deal with it, there's no reason Adobe can't.

That's the thing. Jobs says Flash has had its day because a few years ago Apple was the underdog that wasn't worth supporting. When Apple tried to work with Adobe, they were neglected and left to rot for "higher profile" projects. And now that Jobs and Apple have some real power, 10.1 magically gets filled with Mac-related fixes that should have been in at least half a decade earlier. And Jobs isn't buying it; in his mind, Adobe (correctly) is still the flippant and unresponsive bully who doesn't care about you until your market cap exceeds Microsoft's.

Nobody sane is going to hitch their star to Flash while Adobe lords over it. I understand, as do most of Adobe's recent customers, that Adobe is run by staunch old men who just don't get it, but someone really needs to help them get it, for the good of the web and the good of their company.

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