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Tangential hypothesis du jour: Maybe Apple doesn't want Flash (in the "middleware" sense, ignoring Flash-as-plug-in) on their iAppliances because it would offer

by chl 16y ago

Tangential hypothesis du jour: Maybe Apple doesn't want Flash (in the "middleware" sense, ignoring Flash-as-plug-in) on their iAppliances because it would offer a _significantly_ superior development experience when compared to Objective-C/Cocoa? From my experience w/ Flash development, it would be _perfect_ for at least ~50% of the (rather) simple games and applications that are on the App Store nowadays. In other words: Maybe Apple doesn't want Flash because it's so bad, but because it's too good?

benologist 16y ago
That's valid ... sites like http://www.kongregate.com http://www.kongregate.com and http://www.armorgames.com http://www.armorgames.com have some pretty amazing pieces of work on it. Disregarding the many legitimate but ultimately fixable gripes against it Flash is a great and above all versatile platform to develop on whether it's animation, rich media or applications. It's a massively streamlined path from idea to prototype to finished product - we can prototype games in day(s depending on the scope) and that can include animations, audio, cut scenes and everything else.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
mcav 16y ago
As someone who has developed both for Flash and Cocoa: Yes, Flash (and its IDE) is better suited for game development. (2D, sprite-based games, that is. Not 3D.) That said, Flash is horrible for the kinds of programs you would typically use Cocoa for (ones with UI controls, data, etc). Flash's UI controls look and act glitchy. Not a good experience, for developers or users. Flex die-hards may feel otherwise, but I try to stay far away from Flex and any other Flash-based UI-centric apps. Flash vs XCode is apples-to-oranges. They target different use cases.
- chl 16y ago
  I was thinking about games and (potentially design-heavy) simple apps (quizzes, educational apps &c.) mostly. Regarding the "feel" of Flash's standard UI controls: I agree (and apparently, so does Adobe, as they continue to ship a completely new framework with just about every major release).
- zacharypinter 16y ago
  I've found Flex, particularly MXML+Binding, to be one of the nicest GUI frameworks I've developed with. However, I'm surprised at how little Apple has emphasized Flash's fatal flaw for mobile: memory use. CPU and Battery are debatable issues, but Flash has serious memory management issues. On a device like the iPhone or iPad, with a max of 256mb of RAM, no swapping, and a browser that has trouble keeping a few "tabs" in memory, adding Flash to the mix seems like a recipe for disaster. It'll be interesting to see how Android handles this. Hopefully it'll spawn some much-needed improvements to the Flash VM.
  - not_an_alien 16y ago
    10.1 is not just a port, it's a bunch of changes that were made specifically for mobile devices - including suspending execution state, reducing performance of player instances when in hidden tabs/outside of view, hardware acceleration, better reuse of bitmap instances (targetting lower memory), and a bunch of other stuff. I'm not the one to say how successful they were with that, but apparently they had "much-needed improvements" in mind alright. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/features.html#mobile http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/features.ht... Most benchmarks show great improvements in performance and memory use between 10 and 10.1.
  - Qz 16y ago
    Agreed on MXML+binding.
  - alex_c 16y ago
    >However, I'm surprised at how little Apple has emphasized Flash's fatal flaw for mobile: memory use. It's because this isn't REALLY about technical issues. If it really was, Apple could easily say "Sure, we'll include Flash if you give us a version that performs to our satisfaction under these scenarios, otherwise too bad", and that would be the bulk of the argument for not including Flash. I haven't seen much evidence of this happening.
    - lurch_mojoff 16y ago
      But isn't this pretty much what Jobs said in his rant. To quote: "We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it." The way I see it, "we have ... asked" implies Apple were at least somewhat open to the idea to include Flash support.

by chl 16y ago

benologist 16y ago

That's valid ... sites like http://www.kongregate.com http://www.kongregate.com and http://www.armorgames.com http://www.armorgames.com have some pretty amazing pieces of work on it. Disregarding the many legitimate but ultimately fixable gripes against it Flash is a great and above all versatile platform to develop on whether it's animation, rich media or applications. It's a massively streamlined path from idea to prototype to finished product - we can prototype games in day(s depending on the scope) and that can include animations, audio, cut scenes and everything else.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

mcav 16y ago

As someone who has developed both for Flash and Cocoa: Yes, Flash (and its IDE) is better suited for game development. (2D, sprite-based games, that is. Not 3D.) That said, Flash is horrible for the kinds of programs you would typically use Cocoa for (ones with UI controls, data, etc). Flash's UI controls look and act glitchy. Not a good experience, for developers or users. Flex die-hards may feel otherwise, but I try to stay far away from Flex and any other Flash-based UI-centric apps. Flash vs XCode is apples-to-oranges. They target different use cases.

chl 16y ago
I was thinking about games and (potentially design-heavy) simple apps (quizzes, educational apps &c.) mostly. Regarding the "feel" of Flash's standard UI controls: I agree (and apparently, so does Adobe, as they continue to ship a completely new framework with just about every major release).
zacharypinter 16y ago
I've found Flex, particularly MXML+Binding, to be one of the nicest GUI frameworks I've developed with. However, I'm surprised at how little Apple has emphasized Flash's fatal flaw for mobile: memory use. CPU and Battery are debatable issues, but Flash has serious memory management issues. On a device like the iPhone or iPad, with a max of 256mb of RAM, no swapping, and a browser that has trouble keeping a few "tabs" in memory, adding Flash to the mix seems like a recipe for disaster. It'll be interesting to see how Android handles this. Hopefully it'll spawn some much-needed improvements to the Flash VM.
- not_an_alien 16y ago
  10.1 is not just a port, it's a bunch of changes that were made specifically for mobile devices - including suspending execution state, reducing performance of player instances when in hidden tabs/outside of view, hardware acceleration, better reuse of bitmap instances (targetting lower memory), and a bunch of other stuff. I'm not the one to say how successful they were with that, but apparently they had "much-needed improvements" in mind alright. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/features.html#mobile http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/features.ht... Most benchmarks show great improvements in performance and memory use between 10 and 10.1.
- Qz 16y ago
  Agreed on MXML+binding.
- alex_c 16y ago
  >However, I'm surprised at how little Apple has emphasized Flash's fatal flaw for mobile: memory use. It's because this isn't REALLY about technical issues. If it really was, Apple could easily say "Sure, we'll include Flash if you give us a version that performs to our satisfaction under these scenarios, otherwise too bad", and that would be the bulk of the argument for not including Flash. I haven't seen much evidence of this happening.
  - lurch_mojoff 16y ago
    But isn't this pretty much what Jobs said in his rant. To quote: "We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it." The way I see it, "we have ... asked" implies Apple were at least somewhat open to the idea to include Flash support.