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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

#181

Post by sprout »

dasil003 wrote: post #94

Shelving the question of Adobe's strategy or competence for a moment, I think this review is indicative of Apple's competitive advantage. Assuming Adobe had infinite time and resources, could they make Flash run well for all content on every mobile device? Of course not, they are hamstrung from legacy support as well as variances in hardware and software stacks they have to deal with. But just like Microsoft they are…

It's equally impossible for Apple to craft a consumer experience with as wide a reach as Adobe or Microsoft. Apple is not going to get more than 30% market share with their present strategy.

MS/Adobe are unlikely to fall below 60% (especially since this is not a zero-sum game.)

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

#182

Post by jvoorhis »

`When I tried going to famous Flash game sites like Newgrounds or Addicting Games, I found that, as Steve Jobs said, “Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers.”'

This is why we at Kongregate created our mobile-optimized site that features only mobile friendly games. Of course, you can still browse the full site if you like.

http://m.kongregate.com/

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

#183

Post by jasongullickson »

cookiecaper wrote: post #156
jasongullickson wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this goes 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Based on what I've heard, the real reason anyone uses flash anymore is because of the authoring tools, not the runtime. Instead of open-sourcing the flash player, build a development/authoring tool for HTML5 of equal or higher quality than the Adobe tools and open-source that...then watch this debate become irrelevant a year from now...

I agree that an equivalent IDE for HTML5 would be huge for HTML5. I don't think HTML5 has a chance of mainstream adoption until it gets one and I hope it does get one. I don't necessarily want Flash to win out, or think HTML5 should suffer, I'm just saying that the only way Adobe will keep Flash alive is open-source.

Gotcha, and I agree, if the goal is to keep Flash alive, it's going to need to find some compelling way to remain competitive, and fast.

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

#184

Post by tomlin »

asolove wrote: post #92
jcl wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

We're talking about Google, a company who wrote their own cleanroom Java implementation and reverse-engineered ActiveX to create a ChromeFrame implementation still compatible with anything that ever worked in IE. I think they could speed things up a bit. ActionScript is just JS plus some extra sugar. JS implementations have gotten hundreds of times faster in the last three years, while Flash has gotten slower. Slap a…

> JS implementations have gotten hundreds of times faster in the last three years, while Flash has gotten slower.

I don't know about that. Flash may be proprietary, poor coding community, etc, but to suggest it is creeping down to JS performance is pretty outlandish.

Flash has two communities. One: Designers trying to do timeline animation with a mix of code snippets they've found. Two: Decent coders who implement the safest, best methods.

When Flash performance is subject, it tends to be Flash's poor design that gets the bad rap even though it tends to be the poor developer community at fault. In the same way, JS-based interactive content can also be coded poorly and perform poorly as a result.

Honestly, I've seen some pretty intense, balls-to-the-wall sites that I know would absolutely work at a crawl or snail's pace in JS, but work elegantly in Flash.

A full open-source file format would be a great move for Adobe.

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

#185

Post by OpieCunningham »

sprout wrote: post #181
dasil003 wrote: post #94

Shelving the question of Adobe's strategy or competence for a moment, I think this review is indicative of Apple's competitive advantage. Assuming Adobe had infinite time and resources, could they make Flash run well for all content on every mobile device? Of course not, they are hamstrung from legacy support as well as variances in hardware and software stacks they have to deal with. But just like Microsoft they are…

It's equally impossible for Apple to craft a consumer experience with as wide a reach as Adobe or Microsoft. Apple is not going to get more than 30% market share with their present strategy. MS/Adobe are unlikely to fall below 60% (especially since this is not a zero-sum game.)

Whether Apple can achieve greater than 30% market share is debatable, not as equally impossible as it is for Adobe to ensure the level of compatibility and legacy support for Flash, and ultimately irrelevant.

Adobe can maintain at least 60% market share - on PC's (Mac + Windows). But they cannot achieve that on mobile devices.

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

#186

Post by cookiecaper »

illumin8 wrote: post #116
rbranson wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agreed. The main reason why it wouldn't work is that existing broadband deployments are not designed for P2P. Your neighborhood might have a gigabit of downstream bandwidth on fiber from the cable company but the upstream is limited to something like 100 megabits for the entire neighborhood. It sounds nice in theory to cut bandwidth costs, but somehow I don't think the cable companies are going to be too happy with y…

I hope that P2P finds more mainstream uses so that customers start demanding better upload speeds and Comcast et al are forced to oblige. The upload speeds are really a bummer in the US.

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

#187

Post by mattmaroon »

"After spending time playing with Flash Player 10.1 on the new Droid 2, the first Android 2.2 phone to come with the player pre-installed,"

FWIW the Droid Incredible launched long before and had it. I've used it, and it's not that bad for some stuff. It's better than no Flash player at all for things like viewing restaurant sites.

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

#188

Post by cookiecaper »

sethg wrote: post #69
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…

It's not necessarily that it'd be a simple matter or wouldn't require major architectural changes or whatever, it's just that it'd be much, much more _possible_. And I fully believe that there are many, many improvements that could be made that are just a simple matter of programming, even if running on mobile devices isn't among them. Not to mention a fully open-source Flash Player would make a great reference for aspiring free Flash players like Lightspark.

If Adobe stays on the path it's on, HTML5 will continue to mature faster and faster as the desperation for a legit Flash replacement grows. Adobe could stay in the loop without having to reinvent the wheel and reacquire a distrusting and skeptical customer base if they would just open Flash while they're ahead; people would continue to buy the Flash IDE in droves, but when HTML5 takes over, that installed base is not likely to wait on Adobe and they'll move on to a competing IDE. I believe that HTML5 is still young enough that it could be basically deposed by a truly open Flash.

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

#189

Post by ergo98 »

andybak wrote: post #151
ergo98 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one annoyance of it is to enable a single flash element on a page, it enables all flash elements on the page. Wish it was more granular.

Doesn't it work like 'click to flash' i.e. each element activates when clicked on? I haven't tried but I assumed it did.

It does, but at the page level. If a page has seven flash elements, once you activate any of them it activates all of them (as the activation is of the plug-in rather than the instance). I suspect this was by design, as the thought would be "make compelling flash content and then we'll also get them with the flash ads".

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

#190

Post by cookiecaper »

illumin8 wrote: post #113
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.…

This is a great idea, but I think Adobe might not want to open source it because they have sold Flash to content companies as a way to lock their streaming content down with DRM. Opening the specs and allowing anyone to play DRM content would let the "evil pirates" get their hands on all that sweet, sweet booty. By booty I mean streaming episodes of Hulu...

The benefit from preventing the death of the Flash format is greater than the benefit from not pissing media companies off, first of all. Secondly, as stated, the DRM components should be possible to open if they're properly implemented. There are many open implementations of PGP et al that are open and PGP hasn't lost anything from that.

If their DRM is hacky/not good, then yes, open-sourcing would probably be bad for that component. But DRM is a rather small part of the overall Flash ecosystem, and if they don't get the Player completely open, they are going to lose meaningful revenue from Flash completely relatively soon.

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