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Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

203 points by glhaynes 16y ago

pcestrada 16y ago
If the problem is one of performance, then each generation of mobile phone should close the gap on reaching an acceptable level of performance for the Flash player. Moore's law may be Adobe's friend in this case.
- mikeklaas 16y ago
  Moore's law is nobody's friend in mobile applications where the limiting factor is performance/watt.
bhellman1 16y ago
Shocking? not really
vondur 16y ago
I am hoping the HTML 5 will do away with much of the need for using flash. Whether they use the VP8 or the MPEG codec, I don't care. They both seem to be up to the task.
IdeaHamster 16y ago
I would give anything for someone to explain to me why the right move for Adobe wasn't to simply accept HTML5, pivot from Flash to making killer HTML5 authoring tools, and maybe even provide a way for people to take their existing Flash projects and repurpose them to HTML5? How would that have been worse then trying to wedge Flash where it doesn't belong?
- Anon84 16y ago
  They might be doing that in the background. I imagine that creating new tools from scratch (or heavily modifying existing ones) is a n time consuming process. In the meantime, Flash is all they got to go on with.
- sp332 16y ago
  Adobe CS5 has some rudimentary HTML5 Canvas export capabilities, and from what I've heard, they plan to develop HTML5 as a fully-supported platform in future releases. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v69S22ZBBqA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v69S22ZBBqA
  - robotron 16y ago
    You beat me to a response. Here's some more info: http://ajaxian.com/archives/html5-tools-from-adobe-html5-pack-available-and-a-future-sneak-peak http://ajaxian.com/archives/html5-tools-from-adobe-html5-pac...
- OpieCunningham 16y ago
  Clearly they should be doing just that, if they're not already working towards that goal. But I have rather low expectations. If Adobe's theoretical HTML5 tools are anything like Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG HTML editor or, worse, GoLive, they'll produce bloated, terrible code.
- marcusbooster 16y ago
  Even in current JavaScript engines, drawing with canvas is still pretty slow for the types Flash applications they'd like to promote. Maybe they'll port things in the future but it doesn't seem ready for prime-time now.
- leviathant 16y ago
  If you can show me how to make audiotool.com or even something like captainforever.com in HTML5 I think I'll begin to see where you're coming from, but there are plenty of things Flash does that HTML5 does not. To flip the switch from Flash 10 to HTML5 would be cutting off a lot of functionality. Saying HTML5 should replace Flash is like saying HTML5 should replace JPGs.
  - cryptoz 16y ago
    > but there are plenty of things Flash does that HTML5 does not. Really? Can you mention any specifics? I do not think there are any things that Flash can do that HTML5 cannot. Have you seen Or So They Say? http://xplsv.com/prods/demos/xplsv_orsotheysay/ http://xplsv.com/prods/demos/xplsv_orsotheysay/
    - qeorge 16y ago
      There's a ton of things Flash can do that HTML5 cannot, besides run in nearly any browser (now). P2P video is one example, sound recording is another. That doesn't mean Flash isn't overused. But its not useless either.
    - wmf 16y ago
      Webcams, P2P, advanced audio stuff, DRM (you probably consider this a bug), etc.
      - cryptoz 16y ago
        Webcams? No, HTML5 will probably have support for that. "Advanced audio stuff"?! What do you mean? JavaScript (with HTML5) is a full programming language totally capable of "advanced audio stuff", whatever that means. What do you mean Flash has DRM but HTML5 doesn't? And yes, I do consider DRM a bad thing. Edit: Source for webcam comment: http://devworks.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Native-webcam-support-to-come-with-HTML5_3834.html http://devworks.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Native-webcam-suppor...
        16y ago
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  HTML5 is cool but it's not the end-all. You have a whole set of new issues to deal with when you use HTML5. You have to worry about cross-browser compatibility and specific rendering bugs, whereas Flash authors don't. You have to rely on the slow JavaScript VMs included in even the fastest browsers (even the "fast" JS VMs are still rather slow), and then you have IE, which is still used by > 50% of internet users, of which much is IE 6 or 7, which are outdated and _extremely_ slow. You have audio synchronization issues. There is no ready-made IDE like Adobe's Flash IDE, meaning HTML5 development is much harder for many people. There are other issues too. The fact is that HTML5 is not a reasonable general replacement for Flash. If you want your thing to work for most people, you are going to have to write in Flash anyway. Realistically, only a relative handful of people could run a HTML5/JavaScript program at Flash-equivalent speeds. And that assumes that you just want something in Flash that HTML5 could do; there's still RTMP and significant swaths of other stuff that Flash does and HTML5 doesn't.
  - thwarted 16y ago
    This doesn't answer the question of why Adobe doesn't do that, it lists the things that Adobe could step up to do. Yes, we know there is no ready-made IDE like Adobe's Flash IDE: fixing this problem is something Adobe can do, by providing a ready made HTML5 IDE. Why isn't Adobe doing that and leading the charge? There are distinct problems with HTML5 replacing Flash, and Adobe is in a unique position to partner, consult, contract, and contribute to that. For example, if everyone else's javascript VMs are crap and Adobe's Flash interpreter (which is close to javascript, isn't it?) is awesome, then Adobe can help contribute rather than taking a beating from industry leaders (Jobs) and be part of the solution rather than be viewed as part of the problem.
    - nanairo 16y ago
      I think the answer is a common one in free markets: cost. Adobe would need to invest a _lot_ to make a good HTML5 IDE, and what would they get then? At best they'd be in the same situation as they were before just with HTML5 instead of Flash, and on top of that they would have lost control of the platform. So the bean counters find this kind of proposition difficult to swallow. And if you say: but what if someone else did? Then they'll reply: well, then make sure Flash kills anything HTML5 related, and that's how they end up putting a lot of money to preserve the status quo, instead of using their baskets full of gold to make them run faster.
- WilliamLP 16y ago
  The much glossed-over answer is that JavaScript and HTML just isn't a good environment for rich app development, for many reasons. One "elephant in the room" kind of issue is that JavaScript's object system is not acceptable to most programmers, and most programmers require classical OOP. Even prototype system fanatics probably would have to admit that the current state of JavaScript doesn't work very well, with its warts like the "this" keyword behavior, and the tendency for all framework authors to role their own mutually incompatible systems. Even Google seems to have backed off from this space recently - have you heard much mention of Chrome OS lately?
  - warfangle 16y ago
    What are the typical gripes about this keyword behavior? Once you understand how scope works and how to force scope, and what exactly constitutes an object.. it makes quite a bit of sense.
    - WilliamLP 16y ago
      From the Google style guide: "The semantics of this can be tricky. At times it refers to the global object (in most places), the scope of the caller (in eval), a node in the DOM tree (when attached using an event handler HTML attribute), a newly created object (in a constructor), or some other object (if function was call()ed or apply()ed)." The pragmatic answer is to limit its use except when absolutely required (as Google's guide suggests). The more problematic meta-problem, is that many people do think it's valuable and don't understand it and dig themselves into some subtle and insidious messes.
      - mryall 16y ago
        Avoiding something you don't understand might seem like a good idea when programming, but if it's a core part of the language you're using -- like 'this' in JavaScript -- trying to understand it and use it appropriately is actually a much better approach. I've seen JS code that tries to avoid using 'this', and it often ends up a lot more complicated and tightly coupled than code which uses it appropriately. The behaviour of 'this' in JavaScript is different to Java and other OO languages, but it isn't that complicated to understand.
- wtallis 16y ago
  Migrating to open standards is the right thing for Adobe to do, but that's not how Adobe likes to do business. Adobe is lazy. If there's a problem with their software, they'll blame it on somebody else, because talk is cheap. If that doesn't work, they'll wait until the last possible moment to actually put in the time and effort to improve their code. It's a pattern that is most evident with their Mac software: CS5 (released April 2010) was the first version of the suite that was fully Mac OS X native. (Mac OS X was released March 2001). Prior to CS5, they were still using the Mac OS 9 GUI APIs, which, though they weren't officially totally deprecated until June 2007, were obviously always just a transitional compatibility environment. Even prior to the official deprecation of the Carbon UI APIs, Adobe had plenty of reasons to port to Cocoa. Number one was to provide a truly OS X native look-and-feel, which is pretty much impossible to emulate via Carbon. Adobe's approach to dealing with Flash performance on OS X has been similar. When people complained that video playback was unreasonably slow (ie eating up 5x the CPU time that a standalone player would use), they blamed Apple for not providing them with direct low-level access to the video decoding hardware. When Apple called their bluff and gave them exactly what they asked for, Adobe released a flash player that used those APIs but wasn't noticeably faster for anybody, and introduced several new glitches that made it a step backwards for everybody who's Mac predates the NVidia 9400M chipset. On the Windows side of things, Adobe's PDF reader has been such a long-standing resource hog that third-party PDF readers have garnered significant market share in spite of their lack of support for most of the recent advanced features of PDF. If Adobe would take better care of their PDF implementation, it would be good for the progress of the format overall. Further back, Adobe kept their font format (PostScript Type 1) proprietary and expensive so long that Apple had to create TrueType, and Apple ended up licensing it to Microsoft. Several years later, Adobe abandoned Type 1 in favor of co-developing a TrueType-based successor (OpenType) that is finally re-unifying the font market. Adobe seems to think they're playing it safe by being the last rat off each sinking ship, but one of these days, they'll be too slow.
  - gamble 16y ago
    > Adobe's PDF reader has been such a long-standing resource hog It makes me feel old to remember a time when Adobe reader didn't suck. The great PDF support in OSX is one of the things that's most jarring to lose when I use a Windows machine. It's incredible that you have to download a third-party utility just to view PDF files on Windows properly, and none of the options even comes close to Preview on the Mac. In fact, the only aspect of working with PDF files that does suck on the Mac is Adobe Acrobat itself.
zitterbewegung 16y ago
Some of my experience with adobe 10.1 has been mixed. Some of the games on Kongregate have been very usable and cnet tv played pretty smoothly. Going on the daily show's website and watching movies showed a horrible frame rate.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
contextfree 16y ago
Do the videos need to be optimized for mobile because of API incompatibilities, or just to make up for dearer machine resources (CPU, RAM, network etc.) available on mobile? If the latter, wouldn't it presumably be just as possible to make HTML apps that don't work on mobile for the same reasons? Ditto for the game control issue - if someone makes an game that's designed for keyboard control (or a site dependent on "hover"), it won't work well on mobile whether it's implemented in HTML, Flash, or whatever else, right?
- someone_here 16y ago
  Most phones only have hardware H.264 playback, but flash supports many other formats as well via software rendering. My bet is that it was forced to use software rendering on some videos.
- cmelbye 16y ago
  Yes, that's the point. The author is saying that if you have to go through and convert your existing Flash content to work on a mobile device, why not go the full distance and convert it to HTML5?
  - contextfree 16y ago
    But that's begging the question - there's still no reason to do that unless you already think Flash is a dead end, the future is HTML uber alles, etc. Which this guy apparently didn't, since at beginning of his article he writes, "I’m the last person on earth who wanted to believe Steve Jobs when he told Walt Mossberg at D8 that “Flash has had its day.” I took it as nothing more than showmanship ... " until he tried 10.1 on Android.
    - cmelbye 16y ago
      No, this guy thought that 10.1 on Android would mean that desktop content could be seamlessly consumed on a mobile device, thus invalidating most of Steve's complaints. I don't think that he believed that Flash was "better" than HTML5.
  - 16y ago
powrtoch 16y ago
For the record, the article's comments are full of people saying that their experiences have been very different.
- eli 16y ago
  Flash works fine on my android phone. At least as far as I know. I almost never have a reason to use it.
  - catch23 16y ago
    I have flash on my N1 too (froyo), but it's definitely noticeable when the webpage has flash on it -- even when it's a tiny flash ad somewhere. Scrolling the webpage becomes really choppy -- sometimes I wish I could disable all flash except for when it's used for video.
    - RK 16y ago
      Check the browser settings. Set "Enable plug-ins" to "On demand". It's basically the same as Flashblock.
      - ergo98 16y ago
        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.
        andybak 16y ago
        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.
        ergo98 16y ago
        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".
cookiecaper 16y ago
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. Apple could modify Flash until it worked on iOS properly, Google could modify until it worked on Android. The reason this hasn't happened so far is that Adobe is a bottleneck nobody wants to deal with; they just consider basically impossible to get Flash Player on mobile because Adobe doesn't have the structure or the talent to do it correctly, and there is no other option except to let Adobe do it. An open Flash would open many doors, awesome adaptations, deployments, and uses that we can't yet think up would come out of it, and all the while Adobe would keep selling its IDE (probably selling more, actually, because Flash will then do cool stuff that everyone wants). I don't know why they don't do this. Flash Player is already basically free, all of the money from Flash comes from the IDE Adobe sells. Keep the IDE locked up if you want, Adobe, but every second you keep the Player locked up you are killing Flash that much more, and when nobody uses Flash nobody is going to buy your IDE. I know there are free software Flash players out there, but it's not the same. It's like saying nobody needs cooperation from nvidia because of nouveau. While a noble effort with meaningful results, vendor support still gets you much, much farther ahead. If Adobe knows what's good for them they will be opening the Flash Player as quickly as they possibly can. They are going to be very sorry that they didn't. They probably will eventually take this route as a last-ditch effort when Flash content has dipped like 80% and been replaced by HTML5/JS, but that will be too late. This is Adobe's last chance, they must open it now if they expect any kind of future from it. Flash is too big for Adobe alone, and if they don't want the whole thing to crash and burn totally and have that revenue dry up, they need to open ASAP. This should be the number one priority at Adobe.
- xtacy 16y ago
  Could an alternate approach be to take the route that Dalvik did? There's also a research paper about having a remote proxy to deal with Flash on mobile devices; it's something like a VNC viewer, but for Flash. That wouldn't violate any patents now, would it? http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gribble/papers/sys169-moshchuk.pdf http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gribble/papers/sys169-mos...
ck2 16y ago
For a blog called "the geek's geek" it sure sounds like the guy needs some technical support because many others report a completely better experience. Also, it's a fracking mobile phone you are holding in the palm of your hand and you want it to be as powerful as a desktop experience? Reality check!
- cryptoz 16y ago
  > Also, it's a fracking mobile phone you are holding in the palm of your hand and you want it to be as powerful as a desktop experience? Reality check! My iPhone 3G's processor is faster than one of my laptops (that I used on a daily basis, but recently retired it due to buying a new Starling Netbook). You're damn right it better perform just as well!
  - zsouthboy 16y ago
    Your iPhone's processor may have a larger number representing its clock, but your laptop's processor is likely much faster. You can't compare different CPU architectures by the number of hz. Desktop (=laptop in this case) processors are out-of-order power-sucking beasts compared to the power sipping CPU in your phone and other devices. Watts vs. milliwatts in comparison.
    - cryptoz 16y ago
      You are correct. But I did want to mention that I'm running an old iPhone...two generations old by now. I imagine that the newer iOS and Andriod phones are indeed comparable in speed to a decent but not top-of-the-line laptop. I see nothing wrong with assuming that your phone should be able to handle laptop-like web media functions, such as watching video and playing audio or games.
      - malkia 16y ago
        It's not only the CPU that's the problem, but swap space too. While a laptop would have swap disk, as the OS would require one, an iPad/iPhone/iPod would not, and it's limited by the memory there is. As there can be N number of flash applications running on the same web pages, it could be that you need N "flash engines" running (I don't know that for a fact - just guessing here). And because it's hidden from the main browser, it can't control it. For example the browse might be able to do some kind of limit how much javascript memory/cycles are used, but can't do for plugin like adobe's. Just punditry on my side, but I've also tried the jailroken frash on my iPad - and while it worked fine, I clearly saw that certain games are not playable - they were made for mouse with buttons, and just does not work with fingers. Obviously this could be changed, but what Steve is afraid, is that people might perceive this as iPhone/iPad/iPod failure, rather than flash application one just expecting a mouse, and someone trying to emulate it with "fingers".
elblanco 16y ago
I wasn't aware that the sole reason for flash was to playback high-def video. It's just a runtime. Make stuff that runs on the platform for that runtime. JavaME will choke on most Desktop Java apps as well. The moral of the story is, do mobile things on mobile devices and desktop things on desktops.
- bruceboughton 16y ago
  This would be true if the iPhone wasn't such an awesome video playback device.
paul9290 16y ago
I have a simple flash app Ive been excited to test out. Anyone here have the update on their Android? Could you help me out real quick? thnx
- mgcross 16y ago
  Sure, N1 here, happy to test.
zsouthboy 16y ago
This person's experience is completely the opposite of what I've seen on my own N1, though to be honest I don't watch many flash videos on my phone. Strongbad episodes and casual flash games run perfectly. The small amount of video I have tried seems fine - Youtube via the inline flash player (not launching the separate application) and flash player video porn. The argument that Jobs was right because flash video sucks on a phone seems silly - weren't we suspecting that flash games were what Apple were trying to keep off their ecosystem?
hippich 16y ago
easiest way to kill flash - to offer it, but it should be slow, buggy and crash often. then everyone will think about flash as something bad and stop using it. So Android platform actually tries to kill flash =) Not just talking about is as jobs.
- delackner 16y ago
  There is a large risk that people will decide that the terrible experience they have with browsing (a flash-heavy site) on Android phones is because of Android, and not because of Flash ads hanging their browser. When you tell someone "flash just doesn't work on the iPhone, because flash is crap" it may not be true. But most people seem to be perfectly content with this experience, leading to a positive impression of the phone and industry-leading satisfaction.
gaiusparx 16y ago
Just curious, if you are Flash app developer, are you considering moving to HTML5? Is HTML5 and JavaScript mature enough for the job? Is there a tool/utility that helps convert/migrate Flash codes to HTML5/JavaScript?
- kreek 16y ago
  I'm a Flex/Flash dev and I've looked at HTML5 a couple of times recently. The main product I work on is a web app similar to Adobe Illustrator for customizing print products. You can draw vector shapes etc fine with HTML5 (or SVG) but fonts is another matter because of legal issues. Yes there are some open source fonts now but they are not of the same quality plus we'd have to go back and change all our old designs to use the new fonts. The big issue for me is development time. ActionScript is compiled, our app has close to 50 classes and uses dependency injection. Right now I can't imagine doing it with JS. If you're looking for a tool to convert Flash to HTML 5 http://smokescreen.us/ http://smokescreen.us/ looks promising.
- SteveC 16y ago
  YouTube listed the reasons why they still use Flash over HTML 5 http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html
joezydeco 16y ago
Said it before and I'll say it again: the only reason people wanted full desktop Flash on mobile devices was for the video. You can also s/video/porn if you're so inclined. It's pretty telling that the first thing this guy tried out of the box was a bunch of video sites, not popcap or farmville.
Estragon 16y ago
Well, I don't know about the content of this article, but I'm glad it alerted me to the availability of flash. I just installed it, and while it's not ideal, it's adequate for practicing Chinese on skritter, which is exciting.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  The software equivalent of the Streisand effect.
- nwinter 16y ago
  We haven't optimized Skritter for Flash at all yet except to quickly scrunch down the layout. We just got a phone to play with, so we'll see how much better we can make it. I was blown away by the framerates one tester was getting--this is a Flash app that's too much for some netbooks, and here it is running fine on Android without any optimization. The one thing that we'll have to figure out is how to improve the finger tracking, if we even can--its default state is too slow to start recognizing the strokes you're writing. I can't speak to its video performance, but Flash 10.1 for mobile is even better than I expected for rich apps.
stretchwithme 16y ago
i'm sure it'll be workin like a dream by version 15
middlegeek 16y ago
I have had more success than the author. It should be important to note that Flash on a mobile device is not going to be as easy to use as it is on a PC because the device is not as easy to use as a PC. I love having Flash on my phone as it allows me to see Flash enhanced navigation, mapping sites and the occasional game.
Tichy 16y ago
Flamebait
dimka 16y ago
flash is flash, and it allows some people to make awesome stuff. (samorost mmm) I use it for business, and the technology earns me money. I am not alone. it's curse that it got too popular, to a degree that there are lot of people who hate it. I don't hate flash, I like it a lot. I hate situations when flash is used for wrong reasons. for me it fills like microsoft. still huge, but for me it's yesterdays technology. if i think about a new project I do not want it to be based on flash
naturalized 16y ago
I actually doubt that Adobe has the competence to make high quality software, that would be required for mobile Flash (due to serious optimization that is required). There is probably not enough engineering culture in the company for that. I also think that a proper software company cannot be located in San Francisco itself, otherwise they tend to attract programmers that are too cool/have to many outside interests to write a high quality code.
- myth_drannon 16y ago
  Many of Adobe's engineers are based in Ottawa,Canada and India.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- dasil003 16y ago
  "Too many outside interests to write high quality code"? You need to get the chip off your shoulder and distinguish between genuine passion for hacking, and escapist basement dwelling. Outside interests refresh your mind and body and give you new inspiration.
tensafefrogs 16y ago
"But much worse was that, even when these titles loaded, there was no way to control most of the action. Most games required keyboard or mouse actions I simply could not perform on my phone, even with its QWERTY slider. One shooter wanted me to hit the CTRL key to fire; another asked for the left mouse button." Is this guy serious? He goes to play a game that was clearly built for a computer and blames Flash because it's not playable on his phone that doesn't have a keyboard?
- rimantas 16y ago
  Well, the usual argument of those crying about the lack of Flash on iPhone/iPod touch/iPad was that there are millions of Flash games which are unplayable. Nobody bothered to mention, what portion of those millions would actually work with touch interface.
- nanairo 16y ago
  a) his phone has a keyboard... it just doesn't have a full keyboard with CTRL key and everything; b) _that_ is exactly his point. That most games, and most content was built on Flash with the "PC" as the target system. Quote: "Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers." Hence even though Flash may have been ported to mobile phones now, most of its apps won't, because the developers were always thinking of Flash as running on a PC ('cause that's what it did).
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    That's like saying that after the java run time has been ported to your mobile phone that you can't run open office on it because it was designed for a desktop. Of course it won't work, it never was meant to. But now that it is available the authors of the software will start to receive feedback from their users and will be able to fix those issues. It starts with platform availability, up to that point you can't do much.
    - nanairo 16y ago
      Remember that the original supporters of Flash argued that you needed to have Flash to support all those applications that are _already_ available. This shows that actually they are not that available after all, they need to be modified, and maybe heavily. We are also not talking of small tweaks. If your program was created assuming a mouse pointer and a keyboard, the whole interface is wrong for a touchscreen. The amount of change to your code may very well be massive.
dasil003 16y ago
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 beholden to their legacy software and deploy base. Meanwhile when Apple decides to go mobile they start from scratch. They design the hardware, the software, using open technologies where appropriate, but rolling their own closed-source secret sauce. Then they play hardball with Adobe and any other potential heavyweight partners because they own the entire product stack from design to retail. If some low-level tester finds a choppy video on a prototype iPhone, it takes about 5 minutes to escalate the issue to the people who can fix it directly. Meanwhile, if there are hardware problems with Flash, Adobe has to go talk to whoknowswhat podunk handset manufacturer and hope that they listen. Looking at this way it's basically impossible for Adobe to craft a consumer experience like Apple. Microsoft has a similar problem. Pure SaaS helps with the legacy problem, thus making it possible for pure software companies like Google and Facebook to at least iterate quickly.
- sprout 16y ago
  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.)
  - OpieCunningham 16y ago
    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.
  - dasil003 16y ago
    You're ignoring the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. I might agree that they can't hold onto the huge marketshare numbers they start with as the copycats move in and undercut them, but so what? Then they just go and revolutionize some other market.
willheim 16y ago
Seems to me that there are really two points to be made here: 1) Flash as it is currently implemented is for the desktop. 2) Flash for mobile (10.1) should really be called FlashMobile 1.0 and will need a lot more time and development to give mobile users an optimal experience. This will also require Flash developers to code for mobile. With regards to 1) It is extremely powerful and can create sites/services/applications/designs that cannot be viewed on a mobile device. This aspect does not negate its value. And with regards to 2) that's no different from many websites you visit in a mobile browser and they are not optimized. Just try visiting HN on an iphone. Brutal! But load it up through Google's mobilizer (http://google.com/gwt/x= http://google.com/gwt/x=) and it becomes actually manageable. So now, who is to blame? Adobe? Nah. They just need more time to advance the mobile Flash code. The Developers? Nah. They just needed Adobe to come out with a decent mobile flash platform and now will need more time to optimize for it. What is really to blame? Impatience. People see shiny "smart" phones and think they should do absolutely everything right out of the box just like their 17" laptop does. These things will come in time. (ahem, that said, I've no issues with all the flash sites that work beautifully on my netbook... that cost half what an iPad does).
51Cards 16y ago
Have to strongly disagree here. Flash on my Nexus One works brilliantly. I use it to watch videos and play games frequently and without issue. It hasn’t crashed on me once. Flash is set to load on demand when I request it and otherwise it stays out of my way. In my opinion it proves Jobs dead wrong. Is Flash the FUTURE of the web? Of course not. But it is the here and now. And by not having it available you will miss out on a lot of current content... and will for awhile yet.
- nanairo 16y ago
  Let's assume that you are just one case and not "the world". Sure, you could say the same about the original article, and I would totally agree with you. But here it's the bottom line: if it works fine with 50% of the people, that's still not good for anyone who's not a geek (and maybe not for them either). Even 80% is not good enough. 95% is more like it, but probably it would still be too significant. I think you'd need something above 95% of cases to win your argument. What I am trying to say, is that finding one guy for whom Flash doesn't work is a lot worse than how good it is to find one for whom it works.
dusklight 16y ago
Even if Jobs is right about the technical shortcomings of flash, that doesn't change the fundamental fact. It should be YOUR choice whether you want to run flash on your phone, not his. He has no obligation to provide help to get it working, but neither should he be actively preventing even the possibility of flash (or any other software) through legal and procedural means.
- toddheasley 16y ago
  It is YOUR choice, which you can exercise by not buying an iOS device.
mgcross 16y ago
I ran the "Man in Blue" tests: http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/ http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/ on my N1 running Flash 10.1 in the default (webkit-based, I assume) browser and was surprised at how much faster Flash was than the HTML or canvas tests: HTML: 6.5 fps Canvas: 13.2 fps SVG: blank page? Flash: 25.3 fps For reference, my eeePC 901 only managed 34 fps in the Flash demo (Chrome 6, Flash 10.1) N1 running demo with 500 particles and shadows: Canvas: 2.7 fps Flash: 17.4 fps
zacharypinter 16y ago
I can see the argument against Flash in a mobile browser. I've tried it on my N1, and have been less than impressed with how it handles zooming, panning, focus, etc. However, that doesn't mean that porting Flash apps to mobile apps is a bad idea. Flex is still one of the best gui frameworks I've worked with, and I'd love to use it for mobile development. Just not inside the browser.
c00p3r 16y ago
"This content is not optimized for a mobile device", which means the entire idea of using the flash based technology on a mobile device is deeply flawed.
jvoorhis 16y ago
`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/ http://m.kongregate.com/
mattmaroon 16y ago
"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.

203 points by glhaynes 16y ago

If the problem is one of performance, then each generation of mobile phone should close the gap on reaching an acceptable level of performance for the Flash player. Moore's law may be Adobe's friend in this case.

mikeklaas 16y ago
Moore's law is nobody's friend in mobile applications where the limiting factor is performance/watt.

bhellman1 16y ago

Shocking? not really

vondur 16y ago

I am hoping the HTML 5 will do away with much of the need for using flash. Whether they use the VP8 or the MPEG codec, I don't care. They both seem to be up to the task.

IdeaHamster 16y ago

I would give anything for someone to explain to me why the right move for Adobe wasn't to simply accept HTML5, pivot from Flash to making killer HTML5 authoring tools, and maybe even provide a way for people to take their existing Flash projects and repurpose them to HTML5? How would that have been worse then trying to wedge Flash where it doesn't belong?

Anon84 16y ago
They might be doing that in the background. I imagine that creating new tools from scratch (or heavily modifying existing ones) is a n time consuming process. In the meantime, Flash is all they got to go on with.
sp332 16y ago
Adobe CS5 has some rudimentary HTML5 Canvas export capabilities, and from what I've heard, they plan to develop HTML5 as a fully-supported platform in future releases. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v69S22ZBBqA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v69S22ZBBqA
- robotron 16y ago
  You beat me to a response. Here's some more info: http://ajaxian.com/archives/html5-tools-from-adobe-html5-pack-available-and-a-future-sneak-peak http://ajaxian.com/archives/html5-tools-from-adobe-html5-pac...
OpieCunningham 16y ago
Clearly they should be doing just that, if they're not already working towards that goal. But I have rather low expectations. If Adobe's theoretical HTML5 tools are anything like Dreamweaver's WYSIWYG HTML editor or, worse, GoLive, they'll produce bloated, terrible code.
marcusbooster 16y ago
Even in current JavaScript engines, drawing with canvas is still pretty slow for the types Flash applications they'd like to promote. Maybe they'll port things in the future but it doesn't seem ready for prime-time now.
leviathant 16y ago
If you can show me how to make audiotool.com or even something like captainforever.com in HTML5 I think I'll begin to see where you're coming from, but there are plenty of things Flash does that HTML5 does not. To flip the switch from Flash 10 to HTML5 would be cutting off a lot of functionality. Saying HTML5 should replace Flash is like saying HTML5 should replace JPGs.
- cryptoz 16y ago
  > but there are plenty of things Flash does that HTML5 does not. Really? Can you mention any specifics? I do not think there are any things that Flash can do that HTML5 cannot. Have you seen Or So They Say? http://xplsv.com/prods/demos/xplsv_orsotheysay/ http://xplsv.com/prods/demos/xplsv_orsotheysay/
  - qeorge 16y ago
    There's a ton of things Flash can do that HTML5 cannot, besides run in nearly any browser (now). P2P video is one example, sound recording is another. That doesn't mean Flash isn't overused. But its not useless either.
  - wmf 16y ago
    Webcams, P2P, advanced audio stuff, DRM (you probably consider this a bug), etc.
    - cryptoz 16y ago
      Webcams? No, HTML5 will probably have support for that. "Advanced audio stuff"?! What do you mean? JavaScript (with HTML5) is a full programming language totally capable of "advanced audio stuff", whatever that means. What do you mean Flash has DRM but HTML5 doesn't? And yes, I do consider DRM a bad thing. Edit: Source for webcam comment: http://devworks.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Native-webcam-support-to-come-with-HTML5_3834.html http://devworks.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Native-webcam-suppor...
      - 16y ago
cookiecaper 16y ago
HTML5 is cool but it's not the end-all. You have a whole set of new issues to deal with when you use HTML5. You have to worry about cross-browser compatibility and specific rendering bugs, whereas Flash authors don't. You have to rely on the slow JavaScript VMs included in even the fastest browsers (even the "fast" JS VMs are still rather slow), and then you have IE, which is still used by > 50% of internet users, of which much is IE 6 or 7, which are outdated and _extremely_ slow. You have audio synchronization issues. There is no ready-made IDE like Adobe's Flash IDE, meaning HTML5 development is much harder for many people. There are other issues too. The fact is that HTML5 is not a reasonable general replacement for Flash. If you want your thing to work for most people, you are going to have to write in Flash anyway. Realistically, only a relative handful of people could run a HTML5/JavaScript program at Flash-equivalent speeds. And that assumes that you just want something in Flash that HTML5 could do; there's still RTMP and significant swaths of other stuff that Flash does and HTML5 doesn't.
- thwarted 16y ago
  This doesn't answer the question of why Adobe doesn't do that, it lists the things that Adobe could step up to do. Yes, we know there is no ready-made IDE like Adobe's Flash IDE: fixing this problem is something Adobe can do, by providing a ready made HTML5 IDE. Why isn't Adobe doing that and leading the charge? There are distinct problems with HTML5 replacing Flash, and Adobe is in a unique position to partner, consult, contract, and contribute to that. For example, if everyone else's javascript VMs are crap and Adobe's Flash interpreter (which is close to javascript, isn't it?) is awesome, then Adobe can help contribute rather than taking a beating from industry leaders (Jobs) and be part of the solution rather than be viewed as part of the problem.
  - nanairo 16y ago
    I think the answer is a common one in free markets: cost. Adobe would need to invest a _lot_ to make a good HTML5 IDE, and what would they get then? At best they'd be in the same situation as they were before just with HTML5 instead of Flash, and on top of that they would have lost control of the platform. So the bean counters find this kind of proposition difficult to swallow. And if you say: but what if someone else did? Then they'll reply: well, then make sure Flash kills anything HTML5 related, and that's how they end up putting a lot of money to preserve the status quo, instead of using their baskets full of gold to make them run faster.
WilliamLP 16y ago
The much glossed-over answer is that JavaScript and HTML just isn't a good environment for rich app development, for many reasons. One "elephant in the room" kind of issue is that JavaScript's object system is not acceptable to most programmers, and most programmers require classical OOP. Even prototype system fanatics probably would have to admit that the current state of JavaScript doesn't work very well, with its warts like the "this" keyword behavior, and the tendency for all framework authors to role their own mutually incompatible systems. Even Google seems to have backed off from this space recently - have you heard much mention of Chrome OS lately?
- warfangle 16y ago
  What are the typical gripes about this keyword behavior? Once you understand how scope works and how to force scope, and what exactly constitutes an object.. it makes quite a bit of sense.
  - WilliamLP 16y ago
    From the Google style guide: "The semantics of this can be tricky. At times it refers to the global object (in most places), the scope of the caller (in eval), a node in the DOM tree (when attached using an event handler HTML attribute), a newly created object (in a constructor), or some other object (if function was call()ed or apply()ed)." The pragmatic answer is to limit its use except when absolutely required (as Google's guide suggests). The more problematic meta-problem, is that many people do think it's valuable and don't understand it and dig themselves into some subtle and insidious messes.
    - mryall 16y ago
      Avoiding something you don't understand might seem like a good idea when programming, but if it's a core part of the language you're using -- like 'this' in JavaScript -- trying to understand it and use it appropriately is actually a much better approach. I've seen JS code that tries to avoid using 'this', and it often ends up a lot more complicated and tightly coupled than code which uses it appropriately. The behaviour of 'this' in JavaScript is different to Java and other OO languages, but it isn't that complicated to understand.
wtallis 16y ago
Migrating to open standards is the right thing for Adobe to do, but that's not how Adobe likes to do business. Adobe is lazy. If there's a problem with their software, they'll blame it on somebody else, because talk is cheap. If that doesn't work, they'll wait until the last possible moment to actually put in the time and effort to improve their code. It's a pattern that is most evident with their Mac software: CS5 (released April 2010) was the first version of the suite that was fully Mac OS X native. (Mac OS X was released March 2001). Prior to CS5, they were still using the Mac OS 9 GUI APIs, which, though they weren't officially totally deprecated until June 2007, were obviously always just a transitional compatibility environment. Even prior to the official deprecation of the Carbon UI APIs, Adobe had plenty of reasons to port to Cocoa. Number one was to provide a truly OS X native look-and-feel, which is pretty much impossible to emulate via Carbon. Adobe's approach to dealing with Flash performance on OS X has been similar. When people complained that video playback was unreasonably slow (ie eating up 5x the CPU time that a standalone player would use), they blamed Apple for not providing them with direct low-level access to the video decoding hardware. When Apple called their bluff and gave them exactly what they asked for, Adobe released a flash player that used those APIs but wasn't noticeably faster for anybody, and introduced several new glitches that made it a step backwards for everybody who's Mac predates the NVidia 9400M chipset. On the Windows side of things, Adobe's PDF reader has been such a long-standing resource hog that third-party PDF readers have garnered significant market share in spite of their lack of support for most of the recent advanced features of PDF. If Adobe would take better care of their PDF implementation, it would be good for the progress of the format overall. Further back, Adobe kept their font format (PostScript Type 1) proprietary and expensive so long that Apple had to create TrueType, and Apple ended up licensing it to Microsoft. Several years later, Adobe abandoned Type 1 in favor of co-developing a TrueType-based successor (OpenType) that is finally re-unifying the font market. Adobe seems to think they're playing it safe by being the last rat off each sinking ship, but one of these days, they'll be too slow.
- gamble 16y ago
  > Adobe's PDF reader has been such a long-standing resource hog It makes me feel old to remember a time when Adobe reader didn't suck. The great PDF support in OSX is one of the things that's most jarring to lose when I use a Windows machine. It's incredible that you have to download a third-party utility just to view PDF files on Windows properly, and none of the options even comes close to Preview on the Mac. In fact, the only aspect of working with PDF files that does suck on the Mac is Adobe Acrobat itself.

zitterbewegung 16y ago

Some of my experience with adobe 10.1 has been mixed. Some of the games on Kongregate have been very usable and cnet tv played pretty smoothly. Going on the daily show's website and watching movies showed a horrible frame rate.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

contextfree 16y ago

Do the videos need to be optimized for mobile because of API incompatibilities, or just to make up for dearer machine resources (CPU, RAM, network etc.) available on mobile? If the latter, wouldn't it presumably be just as possible to make HTML apps that don't work on mobile for the same reasons? Ditto for the game control issue - if someone makes an game that's designed for keyboard control (or a site dependent on "hover"), it won't work well on mobile whether it's implemented in HTML, Flash, or whatever else, right?

someone_here 16y ago
Most phones only have hardware H.264 playback, but flash supports many other formats as well via software rendering. My bet is that it was forced to use software rendering on some videos.
cmelbye 16y ago
Yes, that's the point. The author is saying that if you have to go through and convert your existing Flash content to work on a mobile device, why not go the full distance and convert it to HTML5?
- contextfree 16y ago
  But that's begging the question - there's still no reason to do that unless you already think Flash is a dead end, the future is HTML uber alles, etc. Which this guy apparently didn't, since at beginning of his article he writes, "I’m the last person on earth who wanted to believe Steve Jobs when he told Walt Mossberg at D8 that “Flash has had its day.” I took it as nothing more than showmanship ... " until he tried 10.1 on Android.
  - cmelbye 16y ago
    No, this guy thought that 10.1 on Android would mean that desktop content could be seamlessly consumed on a mobile device, thus invalidating most of Steve's complaints. I don't think that he believed that Flash was "better" than HTML5.
- 16y ago

powrtoch 16y ago

For the record, the article's comments are full of people saying that their experiences have been very different.

eli 16y ago
Flash works fine on my android phone. At least as far as I know. I almost never have a reason to use it.
- catch23 16y ago
  I have flash on my N1 too (froyo), but it's definitely noticeable when the webpage has flash on it -- even when it's a tiny flash ad somewhere. Scrolling the webpage becomes really choppy -- sometimes I wish I could disable all flash except for when it's used for video.
  - RK 16y ago
    Check the browser settings. Set "Enable plug-ins" to "On demand". It's basically the same as Flashblock.
    - ergo98 16y ago
      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.
      - andybak 16y ago
        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.
        ergo98 16y ago
        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".

cookiecaper 16y ago

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. Apple could modify Flash until it worked on iOS properly, Google could modify until it worked on Android. The reason this hasn't happened so far is that Adobe is a bottleneck nobody wants to deal with; they just consider basically impossible to get Flash Player on mobile because Adobe doesn't have the structure or the talent to do it correctly, and there is no other option except to let Adobe do it. An open Flash would open many doors, awesome adaptations, deployments, and uses that we can't yet think up would come out of it, and all the while Adobe would keep selling its IDE (probably selling more, actually, because Flash will then do cool stuff that everyone wants). I don't know why they don't do this. Flash Player is already basically free, all of the money from Flash comes from the IDE Adobe sells. Keep the IDE locked up if you want, Adobe, but every second you keep the Player locked up you are killing Flash that much more, and when nobody uses Flash nobody is going to buy your IDE. I know there are free software Flash players out there, but it's not the same. It's like saying nobody needs cooperation from nvidia because of nouveau. While a noble effort with meaningful results, vendor support still gets you much, much farther ahead. If Adobe knows what's good for them they will be opening the Flash Player as quickly as they possibly can. They are going to be very sorry that they didn't. They probably will eventually take this route as a last-ditch effort when Flash content has dipped like 80% and been replaced by HTML5/JS, but that will be too late. This is Adobe's last chance, they must open it now if they expect any kind of future from it. Flash is too big for Adobe alone, and if they don't want the whole thing to crash and burn totally and have that revenue dry up, they need to open ASAP. This should be the number one priority at Adobe.

xtacy 16y ago
Could an alternate approach be to take the route that Dalvik did? There's also a research paper about having a remote proxy to deal with Flash on mobile devices; it's something like a VNC viewer, but for Flash. That wouldn't violate any patents now, would it? http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gribble/papers/sys169-moshchuk.pdf http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gribble/papers/sys169-mos...

ck2 16y ago

For a blog called "the geek's geek" it sure sounds like the guy needs some technical support because many others report a completely better experience. Also, it's a fracking mobile phone you are holding in the palm of your hand and you want it to be as powerful as a desktop experience? Reality check!

cryptoz 16y ago
> Also, it's a fracking mobile phone you are holding in the palm of your hand and you want it to be as powerful as a desktop experience? Reality check! My iPhone 3G's processor is faster than one of my laptops (that I used on a daily basis, but recently retired it due to buying a new Starling Netbook). You're damn right it better perform just as well!
- zsouthboy 16y ago
  Your iPhone's processor may have a larger number representing its clock, but your laptop's processor is likely much faster. You can't compare different CPU architectures by the number of hz. Desktop (=laptop in this case) processors are out-of-order power-sucking beasts compared to the power sipping CPU in your phone and other devices. Watts vs. milliwatts in comparison.
  - cryptoz 16y ago
    You are correct. But I did want to mention that I'm running an old iPhone...two generations old by now. I imagine that the newer iOS and Andriod phones are indeed comparable in speed to a decent but not top-of-the-line laptop. I see nothing wrong with assuming that your phone should be able to handle laptop-like web media functions, such as watching video and playing audio or games.
    - malkia 16y ago
      It's not only the CPU that's the problem, but swap space too. While a laptop would have swap disk, as the OS would require one, an iPad/iPhone/iPod would not, and it's limited by the memory there is. As there can be N number of flash applications running on the same web pages, it could be that you need N "flash engines" running (I don't know that for a fact - just guessing here). And because it's hidden from the main browser, it can't control it. For example the browse might be able to do some kind of limit how much javascript memory/cycles are used, but can't do for plugin like adobe's. Just punditry on my side, but I've also tried the jailroken frash on my iPad - and while it worked fine, I clearly saw that certain games are not playable - they were made for mouse with buttons, and just does not work with fingers. Obviously this could be changed, but what Steve is afraid, is that people might perceive this as iPhone/iPad/iPod failure, rather than flash application one just expecting a mouse, and someone trying to emulate it with "fingers".

elblanco 16y ago

I wasn't aware that the sole reason for flash was to playback high-def video. It's just a runtime. Make stuff that runs on the platform for that runtime. JavaME will choke on most Desktop Java apps as well. The moral of the story is, do mobile things on mobile devices and desktop things on desktops.

bruceboughton 16y ago
This would be true if the iPhone wasn't such an awesome video playback device.

paul9290 16y ago

I have a simple flash app Ive been excited to test out. Anyone here have the update on their Android? Could you help me out real quick? thnx

mgcross 16y ago
Sure, N1 here, happy to test.

zsouthboy 16y ago

This person's experience is completely the opposite of what I've seen on my own N1, though to be honest I don't watch many flash videos on my phone. Strongbad episodes and casual flash games run perfectly. The small amount of video I have tried seems fine - Youtube via the inline flash player (not launching the separate application) and flash player video porn. The argument that Jobs was right because flash video sucks on a phone seems silly - weren't we suspecting that flash games were what Apple were trying to keep off their ecosystem?

hippich 16y ago

easiest way to kill flash - to offer it, but it should be slow, buggy and crash often. then everyone will think about flash as something bad and stop using it. So Android platform actually tries to kill flash =) Not just talking about is as jobs.

delackner 16y ago
There is a large risk that people will decide that the terrible experience they have with browsing (a flash-heavy site) on Android phones is because of Android, and not because of Flash ads hanging their browser. When you tell someone "flash just doesn't work on the iPhone, because flash is crap" it may not be true. But most people seem to be perfectly content with this experience, leading to a positive impression of the phone and industry-leading satisfaction.

gaiusparx 16y ago

Just curious, if you are Flash app developer, are you considering moving to HTML5? Is HTML5 and JavaScript mature enough for the job? Is there a tool/utility that helps convert/migrate Flash codes to HTML5/JavaScript?

kreek 16y ago
I'm a Flex/Flash dev and I've looked at HTML5 a couple of times recently. The main product I work on is a web app similar to Adobe Illustrator for customizing print products. You can draw vector shapes etc fine with HTML5 (or SVG) but fonts is another matter because of legal issues. Yes there are some open source fonts now but they are not of the same quality plus we'd have to go back and change all our old designs to use the new fonts. The big issue for me is development time. ActionScript is compiled, our app has close to 50 classes and uses dependency injection. Right now I can't imagine doing it with JS. If you're looking for a tool to convert Flash to HTML 5 http://smokescreen.us/ http://smokescreen.us/ looks promising.
SteveC 16y ago
YouTube listed the reasons why they still use Flash over HTML 5 http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html

joezydeco 16y ago

Said it before and I'll say it again: the only reason people wanted full desktop Flash on mobile devices was for the video. You can also s/video/porn if you're so inclined. It's pretty telling that the first thing this guy tried out of the box was a bunch of video sites, not popcap or farmville.

Estragon 16y ago

Well, I don't know about the content of this article, but I'm glad it alerted me to the availability of flash. I just installed it, and while it's not ideal, it's adequate for practicing Chinese on skritter, which is exciting.

jacquesm 16y ago
The software equivalent of the Streisand effect.
nwinter 16y ago
We haven't optimized Skritter for Flash at all yet except to quickly scrunch down the layout. We just got a phone to play with, so we'll see how much better we can make it. I was blown away by the framerates one tester was getting--this is a Flash app that's too much for some netbooks, and here it is running fine on Android without any optimization. The one thing that we'll have to figure out is how to improve the finger tracking, if we even can--its default state is too slow to start recognizing the strokes you're writing. I can't speak to its video performance, but Flash 10.1 for mobile is even better than I expected for rich apps.

stretchwithme 16y ago

i'm sure it'll be workin like a dream by version 15

middlegeek 16y ago

I have had more success than the author. It should be important to note that Flash on a mobile device is not going to be as easy to use as it is on a PC because the device is not as easy to use as a PC. I love having Flash on my phone as it allows me to see Flash enhanced navigation, mapping sites and the occasional game.

Tichy 16y ago

Flamebait

dimka 16y ago

flash is flash, and it allows some people to make awesome stuff. (samorost mmm) I use it for business, and the technology earns me money. I am not alone. it's curse that it got too popular, to a degree that there are lot of people who hate it. I don't hate flash, I like it a lot. I hate situations when flash is used for wrong reasons. for me it fills like microsoft. still huge, but for me it's yesterdays technology. if i think about a new project I do not want it to be based on flash

naturalized 16y ago

I actually doubt that Adobe has the competence to make high quality software, that would be required for mobile Flash (due to serious optimization that is required). There is probably not enough engineering culture in the company for that. I also think that a proper software company cannot be located in San Francisco itself, otherwise they tend to attract programmers that are too cool/have to many outside interests to write a high quality code.

myth_drannon 16y ago
Many of Adobe's engineers are based in Ottawa,Canada and India.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
dasil003 16y ago
"Too many outside interests to write high quality code"? You need to get the chip off your shoulder and distinguish between genuine passion for hacking, and escapist basement dwelling. Outside interests refresh your mind and body and give you new inspiration.

tensafefrogs 16y ago

"But much worse was that, even when these titles loaded, there was no way to control most of the action. Most games required keyboard or mouse actions I simply could not perform on my phone, even with its QWERTY slider. One shooter wanted me to hit the CTRL key to fire; another asked for the left mouse button." Is this guy serious? He goes to play a game that was clearly built for a computer and blames Flash because it's not playable on his phone that doesn't have a keyboard?

rimantas 16y ago
Well, the usual argument of those crying about the lack of Flash on iPhone/iPod touch/iPad was that there are millions of Flash games which are unplayable. Nobody bothered to mention, what portion of those millions would actually work with touch interface.
nanairo 16y ago
a) his phone has a keyboard... it just doesn't have a full keyboard with CTRL key and everything; b) _that_ is exactly his point. That most games, and most content was built on Flash with the "PC" as the target system. Quote: "Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers." Hence even though Flash may have been ported to mobile phones now, most of its apps won't, because the developers were always thinking of Flash as running on a PC ('cause that's what it did).
- jacquesm 16y ago
  That's like saying that after the java run time has been ported to your mobile phone that you can't run open office on it because it was designed for a desktop. Of course it won't work, it never was meant to. But now that it is available the authors of the software will start to receive feedback from their users and will be able to fix those issues. It starts with platform availability, up to that point you can't do much.
  - nanairo 16y ago
    Remember that the original supporters of Flash argued that you needed to have Flash to support all those applications that are _already_ available. This shows that actually they are not that available after all, they need to be modified, and maybe heavily. We are also not talking of small tweaks. If your program was created assuming a mouse pointer and a keyboard, the whole interface is wrong for a touchscreen. The amount of change to your code may very well be massive.

dasil003 16y ago

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 beholden to their legacy software and deploy base. Meanwhile when Apple decides to go mobile they start from scratch. They design the hardware, the software, using open technologies where appropriate, but rolling their own closed-source secret sauce. Then they play hardball with Adobe and any other potential heavyweight partners because they own the entire product stack from design to retail. If some low-level tester finds a choppy video on a prototype iPhone, it takes about 5 minutes to escalate the issue to the people who can fix it directly. Meanwhile, if there are hardware problems with Flash, Adobe has to go talk to whoknowswhat podunk handset manufacturer and hope that they listen. Looking at this way it's basically impossible for Adobe to craft a consumer experience like Apple. Microsoft has a similar problem. Pure SaaS helps with the legacy problem, thus making it possible for pure software companies like Google and Facebook to at least iterate quickly.

sprout 16y ago
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.)
- OpieCunningham 16y ago
  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.
- dasil003 16y ago
  You're ignoring the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. I might agree that they can't hold onto the huge marketshare numbers they start with as the copycats move in and undercut them, but so what? Then they just go and revolutionize some other market.

willheim 16y ago

Seems to me that there are really two points to be made here: 1) Flash as it is currently implemented is for the desktop. 2) Flash for mobile (10.1) should really be called FlashMobile 1.0 and will need a lot more time and development to give mobile users an optimal experience. This will also require Flash developers to code for mobile. With regards to 1) It is extremely powerful and can create sites/services/applications/designs that cannot be viewed on a mobile device. This aspect does not negate its value. And with regards to 2) that's no different from many websites you visit in a mobile browser and they are not optimized. Just try visiting HN on an iphone. Brutal! But load it up through Google's mobilizer (http://google.com/gwt/x= http://google.com/gwt/x=) and it becomes actually manageable. So now, who is to blame? Adobe? Nah. They just need more time to advance the mobile Flash code. The Developers? Nah. They just needed Adobe to come out with a decent mobile flash platform and now will need more time to optimize for it. What is really to blame? Impatience. People see shiny "smart" phones and think they should do absolutely everything right out of the box just like their 17" laptop does. These things will come in time. (ahem, that said, I've no issues with all the flash sites that work beautifully on my netbook... that cost half what an iPad does).

51Cards 16y ago

Have to strongly disagree here. Flash on my Nexus One works brilliantly. I use it to watch videos and play games frequently and without issue. It hasn’t crashed on me once. Flash is set to load on demand when I request it and otherwise it stays out of my way. In my opinion it proves Jobs dead wrong. Is Flash the FUTURE of the web? Of course not. But it is the here and now. And by not having it available you will miss out on a lot of current content... and will for awhile yet.

nanairo 16y ago
Let's assume that you are just one case and not "the world". Sure, you could say the same about the original article, and I would totally agree with you. But here it's the bottom line: if it works fine with 50% of the people, that's still not good for anyone who's not a geek (and maybe not for them either). Even 80% is not good enough. 95% is more like it, but probably it would still be too significant. I think you'd need something above 95% of cases to win your argument. What I am trying to say, is that finding one guy for whom Flash doesn't work is a lot worse than how good it is to find one for whom it works.

dusklight 16y ago

Even if Jobs is right about the technical shortcomings of flash, that doesn't change the fundamental fact. It should be YOUR choice whether you want to run flash on your phone, not his. He has no obligation to provide help to get it working, but neither should he be actively preventing even the possibility of flash (or any other software) through legal and procedural means.

toddheasley 16y ago
It is YOUR choice, which you can exercise by not buying an iOS device.

mgcross 16y ago

I ran the "Man in Blue" tests: http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/ http://www.themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/ on my N1 running Flash 10.1 in the default (webkit-based, I assume) browser and was surprised at how much faster Flash was than the HTML or canvas tests: HTML: 6.5 fps Canvas: 13.2 fps SVG: blank page? Flash: 25.3 fps For reference, my eeePC 901 only managed 34 fps in the Flash demo (Chrome 6, Flash 10.1) N1 running demo with 500 particles and shadows: Canvas: 2.7 fps Flash: 17.4 fps

zacharypinter 16y ago

I can see the argument against Flash in a mobile browser. I've tried it on my N1, and have been less than impressed with how it handles zooming, panning, focus, etc. However, that doesn't mean that porting Flash apps to mobile apps is a bad idea. Flex is still one of the best gui frameworks I've worked with, and I'd love to use it for mobile development. Just not inside the browser.

c00p3r 16y ago

"This content is not optimized for a mobile device", which means the entire idea of using the flash based technology on a mobile device is deeply flawed.

jvoorhis 16y ago

`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/ http://m.kongregate.com/

mattmaroon 16y ago

"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.