3 ms·

They probably gave it a good shot, but couldn't get it anywhere near lean enough. Flash turns laptops into battery-powered space heaters; on a mobile device it

They probably gave it a good shot, but couldn't get it anywhere near lean enough. Flash turns laptops into battery-powered space heaters; on a mobile device it's just a non-starter. Flash is just a dying tech. Were someone to seamlessly roll its functionality into an easy to use package, I'm sure you'd see it die out for games as well, which is the only remaining use-case there isn't a ready replacement for.

thought_alarm 15y ago
I'm sure no one understands the technical challenges better than Adobe's engineers. The problem is that the company never admitted these challenges to their developers and customers (until now). Instead, they continually explained the problem as merely a political fight with Apple. Your website is no good on mobile? Don't blame us, blame Apple's lust for control. At worst, they flat out lied to their developers and customers. At best, they are merely incompetent. Either way, if I were heavily invested in any Adobe technology I would seriously question how I could continue to trust that company.
- idspispopd 15y ago
  Amanita Design, creators of the indy award winning flash-based game "Machinarium", recently released this title to iPad. Machinarium is a basic point and click puzzle adventure. If written in native code this would have no issue running on even the first iPhone (of which there are plenty of similarly detailed games.) However due to using the Adobe iOS tools(air etc.) The performance is dismal on iPad 2. iPad 1 owners have mostly sought refunds, and left bad reviews - forcing the developer to make the game "iPad 2 only" despite being a battery killing lap heater. (This already puts it in the apple cross-hairs as it's available to download to iPad 1 users.) Discontinuing flash player is only half of Adobe's problem, the bad code is still being manufactured into processor-heavy apps which sap battery life and demand far-higher specs than what would normally be required if writing in native code, as noted in the example above. The crux of the problem is that it's not a small amount of additional processing overhead, these basic apps are churning through battery via excessive cpu time. These tools from Adobe are allow developers to port their flash games to the app store, and instead of increasing their revenue, it's creating problems and damaging their image/fan base.
  - ntoshev 15y ago
    I'm not sure Machinarium problems stem from the Adobe toolchain. The developer says it's because they hit RAM limit with iPad 1 and load resources statically: "The memory limitations of iPad 1 (which are somewhere around 115 MB RAM per app) are just quite challenging. You have to have it running around 80-90 to keep it stable and the app has tons of timeline animations, the sources are 1 GB, all compiled into one single SWF file + some assets. The app was originally made for PC and upgraded for tablet devices. When you start creating tablet apps from scratch it's a whole different story. The game is now made with 'no compromises' compared to the desktop version and that keeps it unique." http://www.tuaw.com/2011/09/12/daily-ipad-app-machinarium/ http://www.tuaw.com/2011/09/12/daily-ipad-app-machinarium/
lloeki 15y ago
> Flash on a laptop turns it into a battery-draining space heater The worst part being it is so even for trivial flash objects like those "copy to clipboard" clicky thingies (e.g github). It was not skyrocketing to 1.0 loads but enough to prevent the CPU to go in some deep C-state mode and/or back off frequency or whatever. Having such a NOOP Flash object was literally removing in order of hours from my battery life ("was", because ClickToFlash is brilliant). I guess that way they will be true to their promise: the next iteration of Flash for Mobile will, in a way, be both stable and a non-battery sucker.
kalleboo 15y ago
Flash isn't dead yet since HTML5 hasn't really arrived. On mobile platforms where Flash is supported, it still outperforms HTML5. And the HTML5 toolset is still completely non-existant.
xiaoma 15y ago
>They probably gave it a good shot, but couldn't get it anywhere near lean enough. Flash turns laptops into battery-powered space heaters; on a mobile device it's just a non-starter. I gotta call BS on that. I've personally played hundreds if not thousands of flash games on an under-powered $500 laptop purchased in 2009. The article itself mentioned the success of flash on Blackberry devices, due largely to the fact that they cooperated with Adobe's engineers instead of freezing them out.
- dextorious 15y ago
  What Flash "success" on Blackberry? That's like the overstatement of the year...
- flomo 15y ago
  More like "Flash turns Apple laptops into battery-powered space heaters". The OS X player is so cruddy that simple ads will cause my MBP to spin up the fans.

thought_alarm 15y ago

I'm sure no one understands the technical challenges better than Adobe's engineers. The problem is that the company never admitted these challenges to their developers and customers (until now). Instead, they continually explained the problem as merely a political fight with Apple. Your website is no good on mobile? Don't blame us, blame Apple's lust for control. At worst, they flat out lied to their developers and customers. At best, they are merely incompetent. Either way, if I were heavily invested in any Adobe technology I would seriously question how I could continue to trust that company.

idspispopd 15y ago
Amanita Design, creators of the indy award winning flash-based game "Machinarium", recently released this title to iPad. Machinarium is a basic point and click puzzle adventure. If written in native code this would have no issue running on even the first iPhone (of which there are plenty of similarly detailed games.) However due to using the Adobe iOS tools(air etc.) The performance is dismal on iPad 2. iPad 1 owners have mostly sought refunds, and left bad reviews - forcing the developer to make the game "iPad 2 only" despite being a battery killing lap heater. (This already puts it in the apple cross-hairs as it's available to download to iPad 1 users.) Discontinuing flash player is only half of Adobe's problem, the bad code is still being manufactured into processor-heavy apps which sap battery life and demand far-higher specs than what would normally be required if writing in native code, as noted in the example above. The crux of the problem is that it's not a small amount of additional processing overhead, these basic apps are churning through battery via excessive cpu time. These tools from Adobe are allow developers to port their flash games to the app store, and instead of increasing their revenue, it's creating problems and damaging their image/fan base.
- ntoshev 15y ago
  I'm not sure Machinarium problems stem from the Adobe toolchain. The developer says it's because they hit RAM limit with iPad 1 and load resources statically: "The memory limitations of iPad 1 (which are somewhere around 115 MB RAM per app) are just quite challenging. You have to have it running around 80-90 to keep it stable and the app has tons of timeline animations, the sources are 1 GB, all compiled into one single SWF file + some assets. The app was originally made for PC and upgraded for tablet devices. When you start creating tablet apps from scratch it's a whole different story. The game is now made with 'no compromises' compared to the desktop version and that keeps it unique." http://www.tuaw.com/2011/09/12/daily-ipad-app-machinarium/ http://www.tuaw.com/2011/09/12/daily-ipad-app-machinarium/

lloeki 15y ago

> Flash on a laptop turns it into a battery-draining space heater The worst part being it is so even for trivial flash objects like those "copy to clipboard" clicky thingies (e.g github). It was not skyrocketing to 1.0 loads but enough to prevent the CPU to go in some deep C-state mode and/or back off frequency or whatever. Having such a NOOP Flash object was literally removing in order of hours from my battery life ("was", because ClickToFlash is brilliant). I guess that way they will be true to their promise: the next iteration of Flash for Mobile will, in a way, be both stable and a non-battery sucker.

kalleboo 15y ago

Flash isn't dead yet since HTML5 hasn't really arrived. On mobile platforms where Flash is supported, it still outperforms HTML5. And the HTML5 toolset is still completely non-existant.

xiaoma 15y ago

>They probably gave it a good shot, but couldn't get it anywhere near lean enough. Flash turns laptops into battery-powered space heaters; on a mobile device it's just a non-starter. I gotta call BS on that. I've personally played hundreds if not thousands of flash games on an under-powered $500 laptop purchased in 2009. The article itself mentioned the success of flash on Blackberry devices, due largely to the fact that they cooperated with Adobe's engineers instead of freezing them out.

dextorious 15y ago
What Flash "success" on Blackberry? That's like the overstatement of the year...
flomo 15y ago
More like "Flash turns Apple laptops into battery-powered space heaters". The OS X player is so cruddy that simple ads will cause my MBP to spin up the fans.