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Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

blog.laptopmag.com

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

#61

Post by nanairo »

cookiecaper wrote: post #23

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.…

Not sure how much I agree. There seems to be an intermediate step in your reasoning that goes something like: "FOSS fixes everything". Sometimes it's true, sometimes it isn't.

Why would Apple spend a lot of money and man-hours to port Flash for the iOS? Is not like the lack of Flash seems to be bothering anyone much (in terms of units sold). And Google actually did help Adobe to port Flash to Android, and it seems (from this article) that the job is not that good.

Maybe Flash would need a massive internal change for it to reach the speed it deserves: sometimes it's better to simply start from scratch. Also it's still not obvious to me that Flash is the right technology for the mobile/touch-screen Web.

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

#62

Post by dimka »

flash is flash, and it allows some people to make awesome stuff. (samorost mmm) I use it for business, and the technology earns me money. I am not alone. it's curse that it got too popular, to a degree that there are lot of people who hate it. I don't hate flash, I like it a lot. I hate situations when flash is used for wrong reasons.

for me it fills like microsoft. still huge, but for me it's yesterdays technology. if i think about a new project I do not want it to be based on flash

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

#63

Post by malkia »

cryptoz wrote: post #42
zsouthboy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not only the CPU that's the problem, but swap space too. While a laptop would have swap disk, as the OS would require one, an iPad/iPhone/iPod would not, and it's limited by the memory there is. As there can be N number of flash applications running on the same web pages, it could be that you need N "flash engines" running (I don't know that for a fact - just guessing here). And because it's hidden from the main browser, it can't control it. For example the browse might be able to do some kind of limit how much javascript memory/cycles are used, but can't do for plugin like adobe's.

Just punditry on my side, but I've also tried the jailroken frash on my iPad - and while it worked fine, I clearly saw that certain games are not playable - they were made for mouse with buttons, and just does not work with fingers.

Obviously this could be changed, but what Steve is afraid, is that people might perceive this as iPhone/iPad/iPod failure, rather than flash application one just expecting a mouse, and someone trying to emulate it with "fingers".

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

#64

Post by tptacek »

ck2 wrote: post #26

For a blog called "the geek's geek" it sure sounds like the guy needs some technical support because many others report a completely better experience. 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!

If native optimized HTML5 video plays smoothly and Flash doesn't, nobody cares that it's not fair to compare the two. The "fracking mobile phone" point is irrelevant. Either Flash plays smoothly or it dies.

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

#65

Post by wmf »

rbranson wrote: post #49
borisk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

Octoshape has had some successful deployments recently, although I suspect they only offload some of the bandwidth from the CDN. Also, Google isn't the only game in town; P2P offers the promise that you could cheaply deliver video to large audiences without having to pay Akamai or give up control to Google.

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

#66

Post by naturalized »

I actually doubt that Adobe has the competence to make high quality software, that would be required for mobile Flash (due to serious optimization that is required). There is probably not enough engineering culture in the company for that. I also think that a proper software company cannot be located in San Francisco itself, otherwise they tend to attract programmers that are too cool/have to many outside interests to write a high quality code.

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

#68

Post by jon_hendry »

ck2 wrote: post #26

For a blog called "the geek's geek" it sure sounds like the guy needs some technical support because many others report a completely better experience. 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!

"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!"

This would be more persuasive if there weren't non-Flash video and non-Flash games for comparison that don't have the same problems.

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

#69

Post by sethg »

cookiecaper wrote: post #23

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.…

Open-sourcing would open so many doors. Apple could modify Flash until it worked on iOS properly, Google could modify until it worked on Android.

If Adobe has spent years growing the Flash player code on the principle “make it work well on Windows, and then hack it as necessary to make it work tolerably on other platforms”, then even after it is open-sourced, developing a Linux- or iOS-compatible Flash player may be more than just a Simple Matter Of Programming.

Remember the long gap between Netscape open-sourcing its browser and Mozilla becoming a usable platform.

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

#70

Post by myth_drannon »

naturalized wrote: post #66

I actually doubt that Adobe has the competence to make high quality software, that would be required for mobile Flash (due to serious optimization that is required). There is probably not enough engineering culture in the company for that. I also think that a proper software company cannot be located in San Francisco itself, otherwise they tend to attract programmers that are too cool/have to many outside interests t…

Many of Adobe's engineers are based in Ottawa,Canada and India.
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