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Android Tablet Crashes during Flash Demo

43 points by rpledge 16y ago

mercury 16y ago
i can picture jobs big smug now.
- pyre 16y ago
  Because of a single video on YouTube? Or because that video is on HackerNews?
samps 16y ago
It's a prototype; of course it crashed. But I don't understand why mobile Flash demos usually entail watching a YouTube movie... isn't that a solved problem? Doesn't seem like a good selling point for Flash.
- naz 16y ago
  It's 2010. Apple decided Flash wasn't ready in 2007, and it obviously still isn't.
- joubert 16y ago
  I didn't know android or mobile flash are still prototypes...
- czhiddy 16y ago
  Agreed. It's not as if Android devices would switch to this Flash implementation to playback videos. Why not demo something like Farmville?
cscotta 16y ago
Alpha software is alpha-quality. It takes time to get things right. My pre-release stuff is full of bugs...which is why it's pre-release. Seems like it's a bit early to judge the quality of their product.
- CamperBob 16y ago
  Seems like it's a bit early to judge the quality of their product. Seems like an excellent idea to keep it in the lab and out of the public eye, then.
  - megablast 16y ago
    This exposure partly might be due to Steve Jobs calling Adobe out last week. And people do want to see flash running on a device, and now we have it. This is a huge step. I mean, sure, there are still a large number of questions, like battery, speed, but this is great.
- malkia 16y ago
  Zeta Software is Zeta-Quality :) Fun aside, but we do extensive stress tests for our games before going to the E3, or even for just journalist visits. If we know that the game crash, a special person is playing it (usually some QA guy) so that it doesn't. That's failure to DEMONSTRATE!
  - angstrom 16y ago
    Yeah, I don't give them a by on this either. It's not on the level of a BSOD during a CEO demonstration, but it's not promising either.
- catch23 16y ago
  The flash video on youtube crashes for me at least once a day on my Mac... so nothing new here. Is the flash player for the mac also alpha quality too?
  - FluidDjango 16y ago
    Short answer: Apparently. The problem is: They pawn it off as v 1.0 or better :/
- vtail 16y ago
  Which reinforces Steve Jobs's point that there is no working mobile Flash implementation yet.
apike 16y ago
If you look at the YouTube player UI in the demo, it appears to be YouTube's HTML5 player, not their Flash player. Edit: I've been corrected here - for some Flash videos, they use the HTML5 style UI, and for some Flash videos they use the old style one. Presumably the demo really was Flash, although I'm not sure why you'd want Flash over HTML5 on a browser that supports it like the Android one.
- talklittle 16y ago
  Their Flash player now has the same UI.
- zweben 16y ago
  They just changed their Flash player interface; that is it. The HTML5 player looks like the older Flash interface.
- catch23 16y ago
  I'm guessing because their HTML5 one doesn't support annotations yet. Even in the chrome browser, the default is still the flash player.
  - stanleydrew 16y ago
    Yeah, they need to figure out how to show ads in the html5 player, then I think the switch will be fairly rapid with Flash being the fallback.
10ren 16y ago
The tablet looks pretty cool - though the multi-touch seemed a bit glitchy, not always picking up gestures. But it is alpha
Andys 16y ago
In other words, its an accurate port of the Flash platform to this new device.
- ramchip 16y ago
  Amusing comment, but I don't really understand why Flash has this reputation of crashing. I don't remember seeing it crash my browser, at least in a very long time. Why is there a "flash is crap" meme? Is it because it's unstable on Linux?
  - windsurfer 16y ago
    It's actually really stable on linux 32 bit. I haven't seen it crash... and i develop for it sometimes.
    - aidenn0 16y ago
      Have you tried playing SMB crossover with it? It crashes flash in less than 5 minutes of game play for me if I use the contra guy.
  - stanleydrew 16y ago
    I think it's mostly because it eats resources like it's the only thing running on my system. My fan spins up every time i try to watch a youtube clip. Oh and it does crash occasionally, although much less frequently as time goes on.
  - Andys 16y ago
    Amongst the half a dozen machines I regularly use, it crashes much more often than the browser. This includes a couple of Windows machines, where Flash is most at home!
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    It has that reputation because it does crash. Also, Steve Jobs mentioned that it's the #1 cause of Mac crashes, and I saw someone link the Firefox crash reports that seemed to agree, too. Just because it works well fro you doesn't mean it does for everyone else.
edster 16y ago
Here's the bonus... If you read the article that sourced this video the author claimed "It runs Adobe’s Flash and Air apps flawlessly." I actually laughed out loud reading that after seeing the video. http://zedomax.com/blog/2010/05/04/android-multi-touch-tablet-prototype-hands-on-review-web-2-0-expo/ http://zedomax.com/blog/2010/05/04/android-multi-touch-table...
kylemathews 16y ago
I'm here at the web2.0 expo and played with the Android tablet for 10-15 minutes today as well as with their Droid phone that has flash installed. A few notes. I didn't see any software crashes. The tablet, on the other hand, did have quite a few hardware problems. But that's because it was literally made just this demo. The tablet is encased in a clear plastic case that looked like it was hacked together in some lab. One of the Adobe employees told me it had "a motherboard and NVIDIA card". Some of the hardware connections were loose apparently because when I would set it down on the table a bit too sharply, some of the buttons would fire sometimes sending me back to the home screen. The touch screen didn't seem the best quality as someone else noticed. It wasn't very responsive. Not sure if that was a hard drive or software problem. On the Droid, I watched a movie preview on Yahoo Movies and it played flawlessly. So as for me, from what I saw today, I'm cautiously optimistic about flash on phones/tablets. I'd still prefer HTML5 of course but flash on phones will work as Flash is slowly replaced over the next 5-6 years.
dthakur 16y ago
I'm no fan of flash but if a user-mode app is crashing your OS, something is wrong with your OS.
darrenkopp 16y ago
Are we sure it crashed? Didn't see a force close... More plausible he accidentally hit the home button.
- iron_ball 16y ago
  I have an Android phone and love it, but I have seen certain apps CTD.
  - darrenkopp 16y ago
    interesting. I have never seen an app crash without a force close. wonder if it's the difference between native applications and those that use java.
jgg 16y ago
I've kept my mouth shut for a while now, but I have to be honest - I can't stand this fucking bullshit anymore. Do you realize how pathetic you look by posting this back-and-forth tech company drivel? I don't have or use an Android, an iPhone, a Palm or whatever other pointless gadget everyone here masturbates to, so I'm not saying this as a fanboy of anything. I'm just tired of seeing all this tech gossip posted to the front page. It's not interesting, it's not new and it makes Hacker News appear no better than Reddit - read some of the comments in this thread to see what I mean.
- astrec 16y ago
  Dare I suggest you cast your vote for other stories? Whinging is (mostly) never constructive.
  - jgg 16y ago
    I do. There are so many of these as of late that it's become unbearable. I've been trying to ignore it, but I can't stand it anymore.
GR8K 16y ago
Those look like Tegra reference boards, not a product prototype. more pics & video on Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/05/an-eyeful-of-adobes-android-tegra-prototype-tablet-running-ai/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/05/an-eyeful-of-adobes-andro...
loginx 16y ago
The author of the video posted the following comment on the video's page: "zedomax @InfiniteStyleBlog Actually I pressed the home button, it didn't crash, Android OS gives u an error message if it does crash so just to clarify. I think I was trying to hit the Back button and hit the Home button."
- buster 16y ago
  Vote this up, Why the hell is someone making this up?
- j79 16y ago
  I'm calling bullshit on this excuse. If you watch this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgFHGALMqK4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgFHGALMqK4) you can see the controls are located on the top of the device (appears the home button is on the left from his interaction with the tablet around 25 seconds in.) However, if you watch the linked video, it's pretty clear the guy is holding on to the sides of the device. It's even more apparent when the browser crashes and you see his reflection (against the black background), that his hands/fingers are no where near the top of the device. It's alpha software and crashes happen. No need to make excuses for Android OS or Flash. For alpha software, it runs remarkably well.
  - whalesalad 16y ago
    Yep, I call bullshit too. I've had my browser crash dozens of times on my Nexus without a single message. Just poof, back to the homescreen. Relaunching the browser will show the homepage and no other windows open.
- detst 16y ago
  I hate to defend Flash in any way, but even it were a crash, how do we know Flash caused it? Yes, I have my own problems with Flash and love to hate it but it's really not being honest. These other possibilities that should have been apparent from the beginning have me surprised by the reaction.
mkramlich 16y ago
I called it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320269 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320269

43 points by rpledge 16y ago

mercury 16y ago

i can picture jobs big smug now.

pyre 16y ago
Because of a single video on YouTube? Or because that video is on HackerNews?

samps 16y ago

It's a prototype; of course it crashed. But I don't understand why mobile Flash demos usually entail watching a YouTube movie... isn't that a solved problem? Doesn't seem like a good selling point for Flash.

naz 16y ago
It's 2010. Apple decided Flash wasn't ready in 2007, and it obviously still isn't.
joubert 16y ago
I didn't know android or mobile flash are still prototypes...
czhiddy 16y ago
Agreed. It's not as if Android devices would switch to this Flash implementation to playback videos. Why not demo something like Farmville?

cscotta 16y ago

Alpha software is alpha-quality. It takes time to get things right. My pre-release stuff is full of bugs...which is why it's pre-release. Seems like it's a bit early to judge the quality of their product.

CamperBob 16y ago
Seems like it's a bit early to judge the quality of their product. Seems like an excellent idea to keep it in the lab and out of the public eye, then.
- megablast 16y ago
  This exposure partly might be due to Steve Jobs calling Adobe out last week. And people do want to see flash running on a device, and now we have it. This is a huge step. I mean, sure, there are still a large number of questions, like battery, speed, but this is great.
malkia 16y ago
Zeta Software is Zeta-Quality :) Fun aside, but we do extensive stress tests for our games before going to the E3, or even for just journalist visits. If we know that the game crash, a special person is playing it (usually some QA guy) so that it doesn't. That's failure to DEMONSTRATE!
- angstrom 16y ago
  Yeah, I don't give them a by on this either. It's not on the level of a BSOD during a CEO demonstration, but it's not promising either.
catch23 16y ago
The flash video on youtube crashes for me at least once a day on my Mac... so nothing new here. Is the flash player for the mac also alpha quality too?
- FluidDjango 16y ago
  Short answer: Apparently. The problem is: They pawn it off as v 1.0 or better :/
vtail 16y ago
Which reinforces Steve Jobs's point that there is no working mobile Flash implementation yet.

apike 16y ago

If you look at the YouTube player UI in the demo, it appears to be YouTube's HTML5 player, not their Flash player. Edit: I've been corrected here - for some Flash videos, they use the HTML5 style UI, and for some Flash videos they use the old style one. Presumably the demo really was Flash, although I'm not sure why you'd want Flash over HTML5 on a browser that supports it like the Android one.

talklittle 16y ago
Their Flash player now has the same UI.
zweben 16y ago
They just changed their Flash player interface; that is it. The HTML5 player looks like the older Flash interface.
catch23 16y ago
I'm guessing because their HTML5 one doesn't support annotations yet. Even in the chrome browser, the default is still the flash player.
- stanleydrew 16y ago
  Yeah, they need to figure out how to show ads in the html5 player, then I think the switch will be fairly rapid with Flash being the fallback.

10ren 16y ago

The tablet looks pretty cool - though the multi-touch seemed a bit glitchy, not always picking up gestures. But it is alpha

Andys 16y ago

In other words, its an accurate port of the Flash platform to this new device.

ramchip 16y ago
Amusing comment, but I don't really understand why Flash has this reputation of crashing. I don't remember seeing it crash my browser, at least in a very long time. Why is there a "flash is crap" meme? Is it because it's unstable on Linux?
- windsurfer 16y ago
  It's actually really stable on linux 32 bit. I haven't seen it crash... and i develop for it sometimes.
  - aidenn0 16y ago
    Have you tried playing SMB crossover with it? It crashes flash in less than 5 minutes of game play for me if I use the contra guy.
- stanleydrew 16y ago
  I think it's mostly because it eats resources like it's the only thing running on my system. My fan spins up every time i try to watch a youtube clip. Oh and it does crash occasionally, although much less frequently as time goes on.
- Andys 16y ago
  Amongst the half a dozen machines I regularly use, it crashes much more often than the browser. This includes a couple of Windows machines, where Flash is most at home!
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  It has that reputation because it does crash. Also, Steve Jobs mentioned that it's the #1 cause of Mac crashes, and I saw someone link the Firefox crash reports that seemed to agree, too. Just because it works well fro you doesn't mean it does for everyone else.

edster 16y ago

Here's the bonus... If you read the article that sourced this video the author claimed "It runs Adobe’s Flash and Air apps flawlessly." I actually laughed out loud reading that after seeing the video. http://zedomax.com/blog/2010/05/04/android-multi-touch-tablet-prototype-hands-on-review-web-2-0-expo/ http://zedomax.com/blog/2010/05/04/android-multi-touch-table...

kylemathews 16y ago

I'm here at the web2.0 expo and played with the Android tablet for 10-15 minutes today as well as with their Droid phone that has flash installed. A few notes. I didn't see any software crashes. The tablet, on the other hand, did have quite a few hardware problems. But that's because it was literally made just this demo. The tablet is encased in a clear plastic case that looked like it was hacked together in some lab. One of the Adobe employees told me it had "a motherboard and NVIDIA card". Some of the hardware connections were loose apparently because when I would set it down on the table a bit too sharply, some of the buttons would fire sometimes sending me back to the home screen. The touch screen didn't seem the best quality as someone else noticed. It wasn't very responsive. Not sure if that was a hard drive or software problem. On the Droid, I watched a movie preview on Yahoo Movies and it played flawlessly. So as for me, from what I saw today, I'm cautiously optimistic about flash on phones/tablets. I'd still prefer HTML5 of course but flash on phones will work as Flash is slowly replaced over the next 5-6 years.

dthakur 16y ago

I'm no fan of flash but if a user-mode app is crashing your OS, something is wrong with your OS.

darrenkopp 16y ago

Are we sure it crashed? Didn't see a force close... More plausible he accidentally hit the home button.

iron_ball 16y ago
I have an Android phone and love it, but I have seen certain apps CTD.
- darrenkopp 16y ago
  interesting. I have never seen an app crash without a force close. wonder if it's the difference between native applications and those that use java.

jgg 16y ago

I've kept my mouth shut for a while now, but I have to be honest - I can't stand this fucking bullshit anymore. Do you realize how pathetic you look by posting this back-and-forth tech company drivel? I don't have or use an Android, an iPhone, a Palm or whatever other pointless gadget everyone here masturbates to, so I'm not saying this as a fanboy of anything. I'm just tired of seeing all this tech gossip posted to the front page. It's not interesting, it's not new and it makes Hacker News appear no better than Reddit - read some of the comments in this thread to see what I mean.

astrec 16y ago
Dare I suggest you cast your vote for other stories? Whinging is (mostly) never constructive.
- jgg 16y ago
  I do. There are so many of these as of late that it's become unbearable. I've been trying to ignore it, but I can't stand it anymore.

GR8K 16y ago

Those look like Tegra reference boards, not a product prototype. more pics & video on Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/05/an-eyeful-of-adobes-android-tegra-prototype-tablet-running-ai/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/05/an-eyeful-of-adobes-andro...

loginx 16y ago

The author of the video posted the following comment on the video's page: "zedomax @InfiniteStyleBlog Actually I pressed the home button, it didn't crash, Android OS gives u an error message if it does crash so just to clarify. I think I was trying to hit the Back button and hit the Home button."

buster 16y ago
Vote this up, Why the hell is someone making this up?
j79 16y ago
I'm calling bullshit on this excuse. If you watch this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgFHGALMqK4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgFHGALMqK4) you can see the controls are located on the top of the device (appears the home button is on the left from his interaction with the tablet around 25 seconds in.) However, if you watch the linked video, it's pretty clear the guy is holding on to the sides of the device. It's even more apparent when the browser crashes and you see his reflection (against the black background), that his hands/fingers are no where near the top of the device. It's alpha software and crashes happen. No need to make excuses for Android OS or Flash. For alpha software, it runs remarkably well.
- whalesalad 16y ago
  Yep, I call bullshit too. I've had my browser crash dozens of times on my Nexus without a single message. Just poof, back to the homescreen. Relaunching the browser will show the homepage and no other windows open.
detst 16y ago
I hate to defend Flash in any way, but even it were a crash, how do we know Flash caused it? Yes, I have my own problems with Flash and love to hate it but it's really not being honest. These other possibilities that should have been apparent from the beginning have me surprised by the reaction.

mkramlich 16y ago

I called it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320269 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320269