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Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

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

#71

Post by qeorge »

cryptoz wrote: post #40
leviathant wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can show me how to make audiotool.com or even something like captainforever.com in HTML5 I think I'll begin to see where you're coming from, but there are plenty of things Flash does that HTML5 does not. To flip the switch from Flash 10 to HTML5 would be cutting off a lot of functionality. Saying HTML5 should replace Flash is like saying HTML5 should replace JPGs.

> but there are plenty of things Flash does that HTML5 does not. Really? Can you mention any specifics? I do not think there are any things that Flash can do that HTML5 cannot. Have you seen Or So They Say? http://xplsv.com/prods/demos/xplsv_orsotheysay/

There's a ton of things Flash can do that HTML5 cannot, besides run in nearly any browser (now). P2P video is one example, sound recording is another.

That doesn't mean Flash isn't overused. But its not useless either.

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

#72

Post by wmf »

cryptoz wrote: post #40
leviathant wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can show me how to make audiotool.com or even something like captainforever.com in HTML5 I think I'll begin to see where you're coming from, but there are plenty of things Flash does that HTML5 does not. To flip the switch from Flash 10 to HTML5 would be cutting off a lot of functionality. Saying HTML5 should replace Flash is like saying HTML5 should replace JPGs.

> but there are plenty of things Flash does that HTML5 does not. Really? Can you mention any specifics? I do not think there are any things that Flash can do that HTML5 cannot. Have you seen Or So They Say? http://xplsv.com/prods/demos/xplsv_orsotheysay/

Webcams, P2P, advanced audio stuff, DRM (you probably consider this a bug), etc.

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

#73

Post by Legion »

nanairo wrote: post #61
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 (f…

I don't think the point is "FOSS fixes everything".

I think the point in this case is, "go FOSS and you've got a shot. Stick with the status quo and your death is assured".

I think the poster has a point. Maintaining a monopoly on the tools to create media in a certain format isn't going to amount to much if everyone ditches the format. Flash is already becoming a four-letter word. I don't see what Adobe can do on their own to change the direction Flash is headed.

Going open would give Flash a shot at survival.

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

#74

Post by jcl »

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.…

You are assuming that the only thing preventing Flash from working on mobile is that it hasn't been "optimized" enough -- that opening the source to Google and Apple will unlock performance otherwise unattainable by Adobe.

But suppose Adobe's programmers are not completely incompetent? Perhaps Flash's execution model is genuinely unable to be optimized further. Or perhaps most Flash content in the wild runs at the limits of desktop performance, and that compositing vector graphics and text on top of video while running multiple VMs embedded in a webpage is just too much for a memory- and CPU-constrained device.

In that case, open-sourcing Flash would have little effect. Even if we had an optimal mobile Flash player, we'd still need everyone to rewrite their Flash movies to run well on it. That's why HTML5 has the advantage here: HTML5 content is being freshly written and tested for mobile platforms.

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

#75

Post by wtallis »

gamble wrote: post #60
wtallis wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Migrating to open standards is the right thing for Adobe to do, but that's not how Adobe likes to do business. Adobe is lazy. If there's a problem with their software, they'll blame it on somebody else, because talk is cheap. If that doesn't work, they'll wait until the last possible moment to actually put in the time and effort to improve their code. It's a pattern that is most evident with their Mac software: CS5 (…

> Adobe's PDF reader has been such a long-standing resource hog It makes me feel old to remember a time when Adobe reader didn't suck. The great PDF support in OSX is one of the things that's most jarring to lose when I use a Windows machine. It's incredible that you have to download a third-party utility just to view PDF files on Windows properly, and none of the options even comes close to Preview on the Mac. In fa…

I remember Acrobat Reader not sucking up to about version 5 (PDF 1.4, circa 2001). Perhaps not too coincidentally, this is about the level of feature support that most non-Adobe readers have.

Only twice in the past year have I encountered a PDF that didn't work in Preview.app. The first was a PDF of my own creation: I was using LaTeX Beamer as an alternative to PowerPoint, and I embedded a 3d model in the presentation. The other file was a two page brochure where the two pages were individual attachments to an otherwise content-less document. (This was stupid enough that I think we can probably blame it on authoring tools making it too easy to use the fancy features and too hard to do the right thing, ie. concatenating the two documents.)

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

#76

Post by nanairo »

wtallis wrote: post #55
IdeaHamster wrote: post #4

I would give anything for someone to explain to me why the right move for Adobe wasn't to simply accept HTML5, pivot from Flash to making killer HTML5 authoring tools, and maybe even provide a way for people to take their existing Flash projects and repurpose them to HTML5? How would that have been worse then trying to wedge Flash where it doesn't belong?

Migrating to open standards is the right thing for Adobe to do, but that's not how Adobe likes to do business. Adobe is lazy. If there's a problem with their software, they'll blame it on somebody else, because talk is cheap. If that doesn't work, they'll wait until the last possible moment to actually put in the time and effort to improve their code. It's a pattern that is most evident with their Mac software: CS5 (…

Good, detailed response.

There is also a certain irony in that Adobe and friends dragging their feet in supporting Cocoa and Apple's latest stuff, was one of the reason why Apple waited so long to drop Cocoa... and now is so allergic to devolve any control of their platform, including to Flash/Adobe. :)

(note: I am not saying this is the _only_ reason, and I am happy to accept there are other reasons. But this definitely didn't help).

Of course porting to Intel first, and to Cocoa later costs a lot of money and men-hours for what is no appreciable difference to the end user (unless they are geeks and therefore know what goes on under the hood). So I don't completely blame them for that: Apple seems to be in a transition every other year!

As for Flash GPU acceleration, the fact that Flash performed so much worse than VLC seemed to already show Adobe wasn't being completely honest. Surely if VLC can, a company like Adobe should have no problem!

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

#77

Post by DougBTX »

WilliamLP wrote: post #17
IdeaHamster wrote: post #4

I would give anything for someone to explain to me why the right move for Adobe wasn't to simply accept HTML5, pivot from Flash to making killer HTML5 authoring tools, and maybe even provide a way for people to take their existing Flash projects and repurpose them to HTML5? How would that have been worse then trying to wedge Flash where it doesn't belong?

The much glossed-over answer is that JavaScript and HTML just isn't a good environment for rich app development, for many reasons. One "elephant in the room" kind of issue is that JavaScript's object system is not acceptable to most programmers, and most programmers require classical OOP. Even prototype system fanatics probably would have to admit that the current state of JavaScript doesn't work very well, with its…

You know that Flash uses ActionScript, a dialect of ECMAScript just like JavaScript, right?

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

#78

Post by orangecat »

wtallis wrote: post #55
IdeaHamster wrote: post #4

I would give anything for someone to explain to me why the right move for Adobe wasn't to simply accept HTML5, pivot from Flash to making killer HTML5 authoring tools, and maybe even provide a way for people to take their existing Flash projects and repurpose them to HTML5? How would that have been worse then trying to wedge Flash where it doesn't belong?

Migrating to open standards is the right thing for Adobe to do, but that's not how Adobe likes to do business. Adobe is lazy. If there's a problem with their software, they'll blame it on somebody else, because talk is cheap. If that doesn't work, they'll wait until the last possible moment to actually put in the time and effort to improve their code. It's a pattern that is most evident with their Mac software: CS5 (…

CS5 (released April 2010) was the first version of the suite that was fully Mac OS X native. (Mac OS X was released March 2001).

By that standard, iTunes still isn't native. Apple always positioned Carbon as a fully supported and native framework. They even promised 64-bit Carbon support in Leopard before yanking the rug out right before it shipped, which no doubt rendered a lot of work by Adobe useless. I would have preferred it if Apple had officially deprecated Carbon many years ago. But instead they kept updating it and saying it was supported; there's no reason to blame Adobe for believing them.

Of course I agree there's plenty of reason to blame Adobe for Flash being a steaming pile on anything other than Windows.

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

#79

Post by nanairo »

Legion wrote: post #73
nanairo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (f…

I don't think the point is "FOSS fixes everything". I think the point in this case is, "go FOSS and you've got a shot. Stick with the status quo and your death is assured". I think the poster has a point. Maintaining a monopoly on the tools to create media in a certain format isn't going to amount to much if everyone ditches the format. Flash is already becoming a four-letter word. I don't see what Adobe can do on th…

That I agree.

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

#80

Post by acqq »

elblanco wrote: post #35
warfangle wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"even 'fast' JS VMs are still rather slow" Compared to C, Java, OCaml, and so forth, perhaps. Compared to Ruby, Python, and PHP - not so much. (take a look at the v8 entry. and this is from '09 - v8 has seen some performance improvements since then) http://blog.gmarceau.qc.ca/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependabil...

You forgot to compare to Actionscript which is the language that matters in this comparison. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actionscript Adobe's had a JIT Actionscript compiler for years and it's really quite fast.

AS3 is fast as the language, but developers can make too CPU intensive animations there too. Moreover AS2 in which a lot of ads are still made is awful slow. And you can't control which ads (and the quality of the implementation) will be served when you're on some site -- therefore on weaker processors most of the sites which present the flash ads are amazingly hard to use -- you just experience lockups all the time.
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