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Ex-Adobe Engineers on Thoughts on Flash

107 points by ptomato 16y ago

acg 16y ago
This reads like Adobe left flash to wither on the vine. In retrospect perhaps Adobe is better at tools and they should have open sourced the flash plugin 5 years ago. Allowing them to concentrate on world class tools. I can't help thinking that acrobat reader is perhaps going the same way. Will anyone use the plugin in a few years?
- jacobolus 16y ago
  Adobe only acquired Flash (w/ Macromedia) ~4.5 years ago, so they could hardly have open-sourced the plugin 5 years ago.
  - acg 16y ago
    I thought the acquisition may have been almost exactly 5 years ago, but you're right that it wasn't complete till December. Also I was thinking if the plugin were opensource over this period when there has been increased browser competition how much more innovation we would get natively in the browser.
jafl5272 16y ago
> If Adobe crashes on Macs, that actually has something “to do with the Apple operating system ,” Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen told The Wall Street Journal. Yeah, that’s it. Program crashes. Must be the OS. Right.... Heck, why not blame the hardware, too!
- stevenwei 16y ago
  Yeah that quote is especially hilarious since Flash crashes more frequently on Linux than OS X. Is that the operating system's fault too?
  - uriel 16y ago
    I have seen Flash crash a few times on Windows too...
- zzzmarcus 16y ago
  Appropriately, this page has a Flash ad that times out and causes the page to become unresponsive on my Mac. http://marcusvorwaller.com/look/flash_fail-20100430-125225.jpg http://marcusvorwaller.com/look/flash_fail-20100430-125225.j...
- akmiller 16y ago
  Not that I agree with him but this article kind of murdered his quote. He was replying to the fact that Jobs had implied that Flash was responsible for the majority of Mac crashes. I think jobs just meant that Flash simply crashed a lot on Macs but he seemed to infer that Flash actually caused the OS to crash. If Flash is causing the OS to crash then yes there is a problem as you'd hope a program residing in the user space wouldn't crash the kernel.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    I think when they say "crash" they mean crashing Safari, not crashing OSX. That stat came from Apple's automated crash reporting tool, and I can't imagine that'd work after a kernel panic.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - Zev 16y ago
      OS X saves a log and sends (or asks to send) the report back to Apple the next time the user logs in.
      - Locke1689 16y ago
        A program in user space cannot be the root cause for a kernel panic. He meant Safari.
        Zev 16y ago
        I was simply referring to OS X's automated crash reporting tool. Which does work after a kernel panic, regardless of what messed up badly enough to cause such an event.
        steveklabnik 16y ago
        Cool, thanks for the info.
- epochwolf 16y ago
  Flash may have killed Safari but OSX keeps working as if nothing happened. That alone should say something about the OS. I've seen flash take out Windows XP. Not a blue screen but destabilized the system so badly it needed to be rebooted and it promptly froze halfway through the shutdown process. I'm still curious how flash was able to do that because I could repeat it by visiting the same website.
  - jafl5272 16y ago
    > Flash may have killed Safari but OSX keeps working as if nothing happened. That alone should say something about the OS. Sure does: Keep the UI out of the kernel :)
BudVVeezer 16y ago
"A simple 'Hello World' app created in Flash and compiled to work on the iPhone is substantially larger in file size, and it would take up 3.6 MB when it should be no larger than 400K when made with Xcode..." Am I the only one that finds both scenarios to be ridiculous? 400k or 3.6MB doesn't matter -- both are stupidly large just to put up hello world...
- Qz 16y ago
  Making Hello World apps is an edge case for commerical software development frameworks. They're not optimized for it and there is no reason for them to be.
  - wtallis 16y ago
    When your framework is made to build apps that may be downloaded over the air on the nation's least reliable cellular network, you should at least try not to include the kitchen sink with every app. Waiting for the app to download is the user's first impression after clicking "buy". Hello World is not just an edge case - it's a lower bound. There are plenty of non-trivial apps that can be implemented in under the ~3MB overhead for Flash. Once multitasking arrives, this kind of overhead will be even more important, because small single-purpose utilities will be more useful. Also, if the overhead is 3MB on-disk, the in-memory overhead is likely to be even bigger, and it's not likely that it could be shared between several Flash utilities running simultaneously.
est 16y ago
Now I really want to hear the an ex-Macromedia engineer's thoughts on Flash.
asnyder 16y ago
Interestingly enough these Ex-Adobe engineers are likely just as affected as Adobe. On their blog they believe their project Corona will prevail, I'm not so sure. Unfortunately, I can't go into much detail, but Apple is definitely cracking down on these multi-platform developer tools.
- jraines 16y ago
  Are you saying the crackdown is yet to come? Ie on things that are being approved right now, even after accepting the new ToS?
- mahmud 16y ago
  On their blog they believe their project Corona will prevail, I'm not so sure. They're not sure either. That's why they're kissing up to Apple and hoping by showing allegiance they might get an exception. They're probably thinking that Apple would be happy to partner with, or buy out, a flash-like platform that's iPhone OS friendly. I don't think these guys are the most credible arbiters on the issue; they have a horse in the race, and probably an axe to grind.
shawndumas 16y ago
“Flash was designed for the desktop world, for web and large screens, not the user experiences you want to create in these new devices with touch, accelerometers and GPS,” Luh said. “It wasn’t designed with that in mind at all.” Bingo...
- dougmccune 16y ago
  The same can be said of all technology whether that's HTML or any runtime or platform ever in existence. The fact that it existed before these things (touch, accelerometers, GPS) means that obviously it wasn't designed for these things. But technology advances. You wouldn't say that HTML 5 shouldn't be used for drawing capabilities because HTML 4 wasn't created for drawing. That's just silly. The current beta of Flash player supports touch events (including gestures), accelerometer input, and GPS.
  - thought_alarm 16y ago
    The iPhone was announced over 3 years ago. Now it's 2010 and this Flash player is only in beta. It demonstrates how Adobe has struggled to deliver their software for these devices, likely due to the reasons these former employees suggest in the article. In the meantime, Apple has delivered an excellent mobile video and HTML5 implementation, and they did it using open standards and open source.
    - dougmccune 16y ago
      Well ok then... I wasn't saying that they did it fast or that it's released or anything of the sort. I was simply saying that the argument that a technology was first developed before the current needs of the technology is a completely bullshit argument.
      - shawndumas 16y ago
        The point is that HTML5 was designed for touch, accelerometers and GPS where as Flash was not.
figital 16y ago
There was something called "Flash Lite 1.0" that was usually on cell phone demos circa 2004-2007. I don't recall any apps ever being built for it, getting any buzz, etcetera (especially on my Treo 650 which was a great phone). I do remember a few Vaporware™ press releases though. Sorry, plugins are ghetto.
- blub 16y ago
  Flash Lite is alive and well on the Symbian os, including applications and websites. In fact Symbian is probably the os with the most dev tools available: java, c++, python, flash, ruby(?). There was a .net too but the company that made it closed shop.
- mahmud 16y ago
  Flash lite works on my blackberry just fine.
stevenwei 16y ago
"Luh was also formerly employed by Apple on the Final Cut Pro team. He said that because Adobe’s Flash Packager didn’t use Apple’s toolchain to create apps, the resulting code would not work well on an iPhone or iPad. A simple "Hello World" app created in Flash and compiled to work on the iPhone would take up 8 MB, he said, when it should be no longer than a few KB. (Wired.com verified this figure with two other developers who have tested the iPhone Packager tool in CS5.)" 8 MB for a simple binary? Really? That alone is almost enough justification for me. I frequently end up downloading apps directly via my iPhone - a massive increase in download time for no actual gain in value would hurt the experience.
- windsurfer 16y ago
  I would still rather have a large download than no download. Adding flash wouldn't hurt anything, it would simply enable some more developers into the iPhone space.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    > Adding flash wouldn't hurt anything Remember that "software decoding + crash problems" bit? It certainly would cause harm. And Apple's not concerned about bringing more developers to the iPhone, they're concerned about bringing _great_ developers to the platform. It's never really been about numbers with Apple, anyway. EDIT: I'm also not saying that Flash developers are bad, and that they shouldn't make things for the iPhone. I'm just saying that Apple's not playing a numbers game, they're playing a quality game. I'm sure Apple would love for all Flash devs to start making apps with Objective C.
  - butterfi 16y ago
    meh... I'd pick quality over quantity any day...
    - jarek 16y ago
      Unless you didn't have enough to choose from; that is, you were drastically deficient in quantity.
Parabola 16y ago
Adobe could easily improve the technology if they had a freakin' chance to get some users. The absolute extreme of what Apple should do here is throw up a big scary warning if you're downloading a Flash app saying that this app might eat your battery life / is really big for no reason / whatever. I mean, I'm a little bit happy that Flash is getting a push closer to the grave because of Apple, but this is not a good precedent.

107 points by ptomato 16y ago

acg 16y ago

This reads like Adobe left flash to wither on the vine. In retrospect perhaps Adobe is better at tools and they should have open sourced the flash plugin 5 years ago. Allowing them to concentrate on world class tools. I can't help thinking that acrobat reader is perhaps going the same way. Will anyone use the plugin in a few years?

jacobolus 16y ago
Adobe only acquired Flash (w/ Macromedia) ~4.5 years ago, so they could hardly have open-sourced the plugin 5 years ago.
- acg 16y ago
  I thought the acquisition may have been almost exactly 5 years ago, but you're right that it wasn't complete till December. Also I was thinking if the plugin were opensource over this period when there has been increased browser competition how much more innovation we would get natively in the browser.

jafl5272 16y ago

> If Adobe crashes on Macs, that actually has something “to do with the Apple operating system ,” Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen told The Wall Street Journal. Yeah, that’s it. Program crashes. Must be the OS. Right.... Heck, why not blame the hardware, too!

stevenwei 16y ago
Yeah that quote is especially hilarious since Flash crashes more frequently on Linux than OS X. Is that the operating system's fault too?
- uriel 16y ago
  I have seen Flash crash a few times on Windows too...
zzzmarcus 16y ago
Appropriately, this page has a Flash ad that times out and causes the page to become unresponsive on my Mac. http://marcusvorwaller.com/look/flash_fail-20100430-125225.jpg http://marcusvorwaller.com/look/flash_fail-20100430-125225.j...
akmiller 16y ago
Not that I agree with him but this article kind of murdered his quote. He was replying to the fact that Jobs had implied that Flash was responsible for the majority of Mac crashes. I think jobs just meant that Flash simply crashed a lot on Macs but he seemed to infer that Flash actually caused the OS to crash. If Flash is causing the OS to crash then yes there is a problem as you'd hope a program residing in the user space wouldn't crash the kernel.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  I think when they say "crash" they mean crashing Safari, not crashing OSX. That stat came from Apple's automated crash reporting tool, and I can't imagine that'd work after a kernel panic.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - Zev 16y ago
    OS X saves a log and sends (or asks to send) the report back to Apple the next time the user logs in.
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      A program in user space cannot be the root cause for a kernel panic. He meant Safari.
      - Zev 16y ago
        I was simply referring to OS X's automated crash reporting tool. Which does work after a kernel panic, regardless of what messed up badly enough to cause such an event.
        steveklabnik 16y ago
        Cool, thanks for the info.
epochwolf 16y ago
Flash may have killed Safari but OSX keeps working as if nothing happened. That alone should say something about the OS. I've seen flash take out Windows XP. Not a blue screen but destabilized the system so badly it needed to be rebooted and it promptly froze halfway through the shutdown process. I'm still curious how flash was able to do that because I could repeat it by visiting the same website.
- jafl5272 16y ago
  > Flash may have killed Safari but OSX keeps working as if nothing happened. That alone should say something about the OS. Sure does: Keep the UI out of the kernel :)

BudVVeezer 16y ago

"A simple 'Hello World' app created in Flash and compiled to work on the iPhone is substantially larger in file size, and it would take up 3.6 MB when it should be no larger than 400K when made with Xcode..." Am I the only one that finds both scenarios to be ridiculous? 400k or 3.6MB doesn't matter -- both are stupidly large just to put up hello world...

Qz 16y ago
Making Hello World apps is an edge case for commerical software development frameworks. They're not optimized for it and there is no reason for them to be.
- wtallis 16y ago
  When your framework is made to build apps that may be downloaded over the air on the nation's least reliable cellular network, you should at least try not to include the kitchen sink with every app. Waiting for the app to download is the user's first impression after clicking "buy". Hello World is not just an edge case - it's a lower bound. There are plenty of non-trivial apps that can be implemented in under the ~3MB overhead for Flash. Once multitasking arrives, this kind of overhead will be even more important, because small single-purpose utilities will be more useful. Also, if the overhead is 3MB on-disk, the in-memory overhead is likely to be even bigger, and it's not likely that it could be shared between several Flash utilities running simultaneously.

est 16y ago

Now I really want to hear the an ex-Macromedia engineer's thoughts on Flash.

asnyder 16y ago

Interestingly enough these Ex-Adobe engineers are likely just as affected as Adobe. On their blog they believe their project Corona will prevail, I'm not so sure. Unfortunately, I can't go into much detail, but Apple is definitely cracking down on these multi-platform developer tools.

jraines 16y ago
Are you saying the crackdown is yet to come? Ie on things that are being approved right now, even after accepting the new ToS?
mahmud 16y ago
On their blog they believe their project Corona will prevail, I'm not so sure. They're not sure either. That's why they're kissing up to Apple and hoping by showing allegiance they might get an exception. They're probably thinking that Apple would be happy to partner with, or buy out, a flash-like platform that's iPhone OS friendly. I don't think these guys are the most credible arbiters on the issue; they have a horse in the race, and probably an axe to grind.

shawndumas 16y ago

“Flash was designed for the desktop world, for web and large screens, not the user experiences you want to create in these new devices with touch, accelerometers and GPS,” Luh said. “It wasn’t designed with that in mind at all.” Bingo...

dougmccune 16y ago
The same can be said of all technology whether that's HTML or any runtime or platform ever in existence. The fact that it existed before these things (touch, accelerometers, GPS) means that obviously it wasn't designed for these things. But technology advances. You wouldn't say that HTML 5 shouldn't be used for drawing capabilities because HTML 4 wasn't created for drawing. That's just silly. The current beta of Flash player supports touch events (including gestures), accelerometer input, and GPS.
- thought_alarm 16y ago
  The iPhone was announced over 3 years ago. Now it's 2010 and this Flash player is only in beta. It demonstrates how Adobe has struggled to deliver their software for these devices, likely due to the reasons these former employees suggest in the article. In the meantime, Apple has delivered an excellent mobile video and HTML5 implementation, and they did it using open standards and open source.
  - dougmccune 16y ago
    Well ok then... I wasn't saying that they did it fast or that it's released or anything of the sort. I was simply saying that the argument that a technology was first developed before the current needs of the technology is a completely bullshit argument.
    - shawndumas 16y ago
      The point is that HTML5 was designed for touch, accelerometers and GPS where as Flash was not.

figital 16y ago

There was something called "Flash Lite 1.0" that was usually on cell phone demos circa 2004-2007. I don't recall any apps ever being built for it, getting any buzz, etcetera (especially on my Treo 650 which was a great phone). I do remember a few Vaporware™ press releases though. Sorry, plugins are ghetto.

blub 16y ago
Flash Lite is alive and well on the Symbian os, including applications and websites. In fact Symbian is probably the os with the most dev tools available: java, c++, python, flash, ruby(?). There was a .net too but the company that made it closed shop.
mahmud 16y ago
Flash lite works on my blackberry just fine.

stevenwei 16y ago

"Luh was also formerly employed by Apple on the Final Cut Pro team. He said that because Adobe’s Flash Packager didn’t use Apple’s toolchain to create apps, the resulting code would not work well on an iPhone or iPad. A simple "Hello World" app created in Flash and compiled to work on the iPhone would take up 8 MB, he said, when it should be no longer than a few KB. (Wired.com verified this figure with two other developers who have tested the iPhone Packager tool in CS5.)" 8 MB for a simple binary? Really? That alone is almost enough justification for me. I frequently end up downloading apps directly via my iPhone - a massive increase in download time for no actual gain in value would hurt the experience.

windsurfer 16y ago
I would still rather have a large download than no download. Adding flash wouldn't hurt anything, it would simply enable some more developers into the iPhone space.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  > Adding flash wouldn't hurt anything Remember that "software decoding + crash problems" bit? It certainly would cause harm. And Apple's not concerned about bringing more developers to the iPhone, they're concerned about bringing _great_ developers to the platform. It's never really been about numbers with Apple, anyway. EDIT: I'm also not saying that Flash developers are bad, and that they shouldn't make things for the iPhone. I'm just saying that Apple's not playing a numbers game, they're playing a quality game. I'm sure Apple would love for all Flash devs to start making apps with Objective C.
- butterfi 16y ago
  meh... I'd pick quality over quantity any day...
  - jarek 16y ago
    Unless you didn't have enough to choose from; that is, you were drastically deficient in quantity.

Parabola 16y ago

Adobe could easily improve the technology if they had a freakin' chance to get some users. The absolute extreme of what Apple should do here is throw up a big scary warning if you're downloading a Flash app saying that this app might eat your battery life / is really big for no reason / whatever. I mean, I'm a little bit happy that Flash is getting a push closer to the grave because of Apple, but this is not a good precedent.