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* Flash websites will have to be rewritten because it relies on 'rollovers', which is not part of Apple's 'revolutionary' touch interface: overblown for two rea

* Flash websites will have to be rewritten because it relies on 'rollovers', which is not part of Apple's 'revolutionary' touch interface: overblown for two reasons - a) few stuff will have to be rewritten (many videos show desktop Flash content working on mobile phones without a problem); and b) this is not a problem with Flash, as any JS/HTML-based interface that relies on rollovers has the same issues. * Flash is 'closed and proprietary': Flash is as 'closed and proprietary' as many of the technologies he's trying to portray as open, if not less. H264 is not open. Objective+C++ is not open. Flash (SWF) has a fully published spec and anyone can write tools to create, or play, SWF content, without royalties, or without having to respond to any entity. * Adobe only wants cross-platform apps, not good apps; generic subjective bullshit. * Comparing video decompression versus hardware decompression battery gains and claiming that's an advantage over Flash: bullshit, since Flash uses video decompression in most cases. * Saying Adobe postponed the release dates of Flash 10.1 for smartphones: bullshit. He's repeating a story that has already been corrected on a number of places (that Flash's release was pushed to 2nd half of 2010) as fact. That he's ignoring the fact that the story was misinterpreted by one source, and simply repeating the wrong news, is staggering. FP is still bound for a release in the 1st half of 2010. * Saying "Adobe has recently added support for h264 playback": gee, I guess 2.5 years is "recently"? h264 support was added with FP 9.0.115, released in December 2007. There's a lot more, but it tends to get tiring to constantly dispel the most obvious FUD written for the general public and full of misinformation. Mactards will believe whatever they want to believe, so hey... I'll just let the platform speak for itself. In 5 years, let's see how well Apple narrow mindedness business decisions work out for them.

teamonkey 16y ago
"Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world." Clearly nonsense. I'm willing to bet that there are many, many more games and entertainment apps written in Flash alone than there are on the app store.
- bradshaw1965 16y ago
  "I'm willing to bet that there are many, many more games and entertainment apps written in Flash alone than there are on the app store." Is that a position for or against keeping flash off the iPhone, iPod and iPad?
  - teamonkey 16y ago
    Neither. It's just pointing out one of many FUD items in Steve's memo.
- veemjeem 16y ago
  Flash has been around a bit longer than the iPhone has, so no surprise there. Flash has been around since PointCast Network, if anyone actually still remembers that.
ptomato 16y ago
* "Objective+C++ is not open." Yeah? http://gcc.gnu.org/ http://gcc.gnu.org/ * "Adobe only wants cross-platform apps, not good apps; generic subjective bullshit." Alright, so point to a single Adobe Air app, for example, that looks & behaves natively. * "Comparing video decompression versus hardware decompression battery gains and claiming that's an advantage over Flash: bullshit, since Flash uses video decompression in most cases." Did you read the article? "the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software" But hey, easy to prove wrong. Point to one mobile phone with Flash (not flash lite) support that has decent battery life. ... Oh, wait... Well, one mobile phone that has Flash support period? No?
- not_an_alien 16y ago
  * If the compiler being open means Objective-C is open, then Flash is open as well: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK * We're talking about mobile applications like games being good enough, not desktop applications using native components. Please don't stray the conversation. Otherwise it's as dumb as me coming and saying iTunes should not be running on Windows. * "Comparing video decompression" - The article (wishfully) ignores the fact that 'older' (flv) video formats are transcoded on the fly to a format that can be played by hardware. This technology has been present in the player for a while - ever since Flash Lite. Requires more CPU, but it is not the same as full software playback. Also, asking for mobile phones with battery life benchmarks is bogus, since it's still not officially released, so no proof can exist. It's like saying the next OS X is inherently shit just because you haven't seen it yet.
  - ptomato 16y ago
    * Well, I'm not sure what other part of Objective-C that's not "open" you would be talking about, exactly... * "We're talking about mobile applications like games being good enough, not applications using native components." Except we're not. That whole section was discussing specifically 3.3.1 and why they aren't going to allow cross-compiled apps to run on the iPhone. * "Comparing video decompression" Oh, that's not gonna have an effect on battery life, nooooo. And so what, you're saying Apple should have included something that isn't even released yet in the iPhone?
naner 16y ago
> H264 is not open. There are multiple implementations and Apple can tweak how it runs. It is open enough for their purposes. > Objective+C++ is not open. He never said it was. He said Apple has several proprietary products but believed the web should be open. > Flash (SWF) has a fully published spec and anyone can write tools to create, or play, SWF content, without royalties, or without having to respond to any entity. Yet Adobe has the only full implementation of Flash and if someone else were to try and implement it, it would always be behind the official release (just like Moonlight). And Adobe got lawyer-happy when open source guys reversed the streaming protocol in Flash so nobody is eager to try this anyways. > Saying Adobe postponed the release dates of Flash 10.1 for smartphones: bullshit. The fact is Adobe has been boasting about Flash on smartphones since Android first came out and there have been no working devices out except Maemo which totally sucked in every way Jobs described. There was spin in this article just like his DRM article but I wouldn't qualify anything as FUD.
- not_an_alien 16y ago
  > It is open enough for their purposes. Ok great, so Flash is also "open enough": fully published specs, anyone is allowed to use the format (creating, playing) without royalties. SWF is more open than h264. > He never said it was True. But if he wants to make this conversation an open-versus-closed conversation, I fully expect to compare the platforms in general instead of just a tiny bit of it. > There was spin in this article just like his DRM article but I wouldn't qualify anything as FUD. Saying Adobe postponed the release date is a lie. Saying they said it would be released before is also a lie, since Adobe never announced a date for public release (it was available for devs as beta). Maybe it's not your definition of FUD, but it's still a lie. I don't expect the CEO of a company this big to be repeating this bullshit. http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/04/19/flash-player-10-1-for-android-still-on-track-for-h1-release/ http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/04/19/flash-player-10-1-for-an... Is he going to post a correction? Somehow, I don't think so.
  - astrange 16y ago
    > Ok great, so Flash is also "open enough": fully published specs, anyone is allowed to use the format (creating, playing) without royalties. SWF is more open than h264. But does anyone do this? I see no usable reimplementations of Flash Player, and the spec cannot possibly be complete. H.264 is a real standard with a conformance suite and bit-accuracy, and no scripting languages or multiple versions with different bugs to reimplement. Flash also includes VP6 and RTMPE, which are proprietary and must be reverse-engineered.
grk 16y ago
Objective+C++?
- not_an_alien 16y ago
  Yeah, that was funny. I'll blame nerd rage.
  - cpr 16y ago
    Why? Apple's compilers support C, Objective-C and C++ in a single source, so you can call it Objective-C++.
illumin8 16y ago
Wait a minute, how is comparing H.264 hardware support for decoding (I think you meant decoding, not decompression) vs. software bullshit? Shipping versions of Flash still use software for video decoding. The only versions that use hardware are unreleased beta versions of 10.1. Your post sounds like an Adobe apologist making stuff up.
- Qz 16y ago
  Your post makes it sound like said beta version will never see the light of day.
  - illumin8 16y ago
    I'm sure it will see the light of day. I'm using the release candidate on my media center PC right now because it is the first version of Flash that can play Hulu content full screen at 1080p resolution without dropping frames. Running a beta of a Flash Plugin that kinda supports hardware decoding but still crashes occasionally on a Windows PC is much different than running a production quality release of a hardware accelerated Flash plugin on a mobile device.
- not_an_alien 16y ago
  Hardware decoding of video content has been available since FP version 10, released in October 2008. I'm not making stuff up. I actually have my history of gripes with Adobe, as if I've been working with their software for more than a decade. If anything, I'm just enraged that this article is making stuff up, and I don't like people taking ideology and fundamentalism into a discussion that should be tech-based only.
  - yuvi 16y ago
    That isn't hardware decode, that's hardware scaling. http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/05/flash_uses_the_gpu.html http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/05/flash_uses_the_gp... Also, Flash does not use any of the multiple hardware decode APIs on linux yet due to it needing readback support which apparently they don't have yet. http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2010/01/solving_different_problems.html http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2010/01/solving_different...
Shorel 16y ago
I enjoy flash games and whatnot, but: We should not NEED flash for reproducing video on the Web, no matter what codec or platform are involved.

teamonkey 16y ago

"Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world." Clearly nonsense. I'm willing to bet that there are many, many more games and entertainment apps written in Flash alone than there are on the app store.

bradshaw1965 16y ago
"I'm willing to bet that there are many, many more games and entertainment apps written in Flash alone than there are on the app store." Is that a position for or against keeping flash off the iPhone, iPod and iPad?
- teamonkey 16y ago
  Neither. It's just pointing out one of many FUD items in Steve's memo.
veemjeem 16y ago
Flash has been around a bit longer than the iPhone has, so no surprise there. Flash has been around since PointCast Network, if anyone actually still remembers that.

ptomato 16y ago

* "Objective+C++ is not open." Yeah? http://gcc.gnu.org/ http://gcc.gnu.org/ * "Adobe only wants cross-platform apps, not good apps; generic subjective bullshit." Alright, so point to a single Adobe Air app, for example, that looks & behaves natively. * "Comparing video decompression versus hardware decompression battery gains and claiming that's an advantage over Flash: bullshit, since Flash uses video decompression in most cases." Did you read the article? "the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software" But hey, easy to prove wrong. Point to one mobile phone with Flash (not flash lite) support that has decent battery life. ... Oh, wait... Well, one mobile phone that has Flash support period? No?

not_an_alien 16y ago
* If the compiler being open means Objective-C is open, then Flash is open as well: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK * We're talking about mobile applications like games being good enough, not desktop applications using native components. Please don't stray the conversation. Otherwise it's as dumb as me coming and saying iTunes should not be running on Windows. * "Comparing video decompression" - The article (wishfully) ignores the fact that 'older' (flv) video formats are transcoded on the fly to a format that can be played by hardware. This technology has been present in the player for a while - ever since Flash Lite. Requires more CPU, but it is not the same as full software playback. Also, asking for mobile phones with battery life benchmarks is bogus, since it's still not officially released, so no proof can exist. It's like saying the next OS X is inherently shit just because you haven't seen it yet.
- ptomato 16y ago
  * Well, I'm not sure what other part of Objective-C that's not "open" you would be talking about, exactly... * "We're talking about mobile applications like games being good enough, not applications using native components." Except we're not. That whole section was discussing specifically 3.3.1 and why they aren't going to allow cross-compiled apps to run on the iPhone. * "Comparing video decompression" Oh, that's not gonna have an effect on battery life, nooooo. And so what, you're saying Apple should have included something that isn't even released yet in the iPhone?

naner 16y ago

> H264 is not open. There are multiple implementations and Apple can tweak how it runs. It is open enough for their purposes. > Objective+C++ is not open. He never said it was. He said Apple has several proprietary products but believed the web should be open. > Flash (SWF) has a fully published spec and anyone can write tools to create, or play, SWF content, without royalties, or without having to respond to any entity. Yet Adobe has the only full implementation of Flash and if someone else were to try and implement it, it would always be behind the official release (just like Moonlight). And Adobe got lawyer-happy when open source guys reversed the streaming protocol in Flash so nobody is eager to try this anyways. > Saying Adobe postponed the release dates of Flash 10.1 for smartphones: bullshit. The fact is Adobe has been boasting about Flash on smartphones since Android first came out and there have been no working devices out except Maemo which totally sucked in every way Jobs described. There was spin in this article just like his DRM article but I wouldn't qualify anything as FUD.

not_an_alien 16y ago
> It is open enough for their purposes. Ok great, so Flash is also "open enough": fully published specs, anyone is allowed to use the format (creating, playing) without royalties. SWF is more open than h264. > He never said it was True. But if he wants to make this conversation an open-versus-closed conversation, I fully expect to compare the platforms in general instead of just a tiny bit of it. > There was spin in this article just like his DRM article but I wouldn't qualify anything as FUD. Saying Adobe postponed the release date is a lie. Saying they said it would be released before is also a lie, since Adobe never announced a date for public release (it was available for devs as beta). Maybe it's not your definition of FUD, but it's still a lie. I don't expect the CEO of a company this big to be repeating this bullshit. http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/04/19/flash-player-10-1-for-android-still-on-track-for-h1-release/ http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/04/19/flash-player-10-1-for-an... Is he going to post a correction? Somehow, I don't think so.
- astrange 16y ago
  > Ok great, so Flash is also "open enough": fully published specs, anyone is allowed to use the format (creating, playing) without royalties. SWF is more open than h264. But does anyone do this? I see no usable reimplementations of Flash Player, and the spec cannot possibly be complete. H.264 is a real standard with a conformance suite and bit-accuracy, and no scripting languages or multiple versions with different bugs to reimplement. Flash also includes VP6 and RTMPE, which are proprietary and must be reverse-engineered.

grk 16y ago

Objective+C++?

not_an_alien 16y ago
Yeah, that was funny. I'll blame nerd rage.
- cpr 16y ago
  Why? Apple's compilers support C, Objective-C and C++ in a single source, so you can call it Objective-C++.

illumin8 16y ago

Wait a minute, how is comparing H.264 hardware support for decoding (I think you meant decoding, not decompression) vs. software bullshit? Shipping versions of Flash still use software for video decoding. The only versions that use hardware are unreleased beta versions of 10.1. Your post sounds like an Adobe apologist making stuff up.

Qz 16y ago
Your post makes it sound like said beta version will never see the light of day.
- illumin8 16y ago
  I'm sure it will see the light of day. I'm using the release candidate on my media center PC right now because it is the first version of Flash that can play Hulu content full screen at 1080p resolution without dropping frames. Running a beta of a Flash Plugin that kinda supports hardware decoding but still crashes occasionally on a Windows PC is much different than running a production quality release of a hardware accelerated Flash plugin on a mobile device.
not_an_alien 16y ago
Hardware decoding of video content has been available since FP version 10, released in October 2008. I'm not making stuff up. I actually have my history of gripes with Adobe, as if I've been working with their software for more than a decade. If anything, I'm just enraged that this article is making stuff up, and I don't like people taking ideology and fundamentalism into a discussion that should be tech-based only.
- yuvi 16y ago
  That isn't hardware decode, that's hardware scaling. http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/05/flash_uses_the_gpu.html http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/05/flash_uses_the_gp... Also, Flash does not use any of the multiple hardware decode APIs on linux yet due to it needing readback support which apparently they don't have yet. http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2010/01/solving_different_problems.html http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2010/01/solving_different...

Shorel 16y ago

I enjoy flash games and whatnot, but: We should not NEED flash for reproducing video on the Web, no matter what codec or platform are involved.