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Personally, as a development platform, with Android 2.2 around the corner, and Adobe releasing the iPhone packager for other mobile OS, I'm willing to give them breathing space to get on with what they are trying to achieve.

The problem I find with /. is so many people seem to be doing the "well v6 was crap, v10.1 must be awful" routine. It's tedious. Please go and read this http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2010/05/engineering_flash_player.html .

Currently there is no other company out there trying to deliver such a comprehensive write once, run anywhere solution. If they pull this off, my life as a developer becomes a lot simpler.

Have a look at the Flex SDK. It's Adobe's open-source tool for creating content to run on the Flash player, and it runs fine for me on Linux. I don't use BSD or Solaris so can't comment on those.

It's a command-line tool and doesn't have the visual bells and whistles of the Flash IDE but is a good way to produce Flash content. Whilst it's primarily aimed at producing application-style code it's more than capable of graphical/game content too, you just need to bring the graphics in from another application.

In the past I had to write a Flash 'video player plus graphical metadata overlay' style application for work. I had a choice of what to write it in, Flash IDE and Flex SDK were both readily available, and I went for Flex because it fitted in with my standard workflow better- I was still using the same text editors, build systems, and version control that I'd use in any language and the GUI library in Flex was a lot nicer than the one Flash was shipping with at the time.

Recently, Google announced Android 2.2, the next version of their Linux-based mobile operating system targeted at phones and PDAs, at Google I/O 2010. Developers praised the update, calling it and its features a welcome addition to the platform.

Android 2.2 will bring the phone operating system closer to parity with its competitors. With 2.2r4 out now and a projected final release date of Summer '10, Android 2.2 is coming fast.

But stepping back from all of the commotion, what exactly is Google offering with this update? What are these new features and who will benefit from them? There are plenty of questions about Android 2.2and here are the answers.

Five Alive

Probably the most important update for Android for its end-users is HTML5. This changes very little about the platform itself, but it shows that Google is investing in the technology. It also means that users will have a seamless Web experience.

These two things are important for the future success of Android as a viable mobile platform, though Google's implementation might prove problematic.

On live devices, users will have to install Android 2.2 in its entirety to gain HTML5 support. An entire operating system upgrade for a browser? Get real and update the browser on its owndon't make your users go through the trouble of updating and installing a fundamental update just for some HTML5 support, Google. If this is how you run your phone operating system, I'd hate to see what you expect of Chrome OS users.

And there's also the fact that HTML5 is not novel. Every other industry player has already been including HTML5 support; Apple has long been a proponent of this, including HTML5 support in the developmental Webkit as well Safari since 2007. You're welcome to the party, Google, but don't announce it like you're the one throwing it. You can make catchup, but it's still catchup.

Flash Forward

Oh, Flash. Google and Adobe are performing a very calculated industry sixty-nine because both Apple and Google want the mobile-cum-portable market and Adobe wants the video portion of both.

Apple is pushing the open HTML5 standard; Adobe is pissed at Apple. Google, with the old the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend tactic, sees an opportunity and hooks up with Adobe. Sadly, revenge sex only seems clever at first.

The reality is that HTML5, being open and supported by hundreds of companies and standard bodies, will win in the end. Google and Adobe will look like assholes having lapped at such a bloated, poorly-coded, closed video platform that everyone else will zoom past using their browsers sans crashy plugin.

Who wins in the end? The entire industry, sharing in the HTML5 platform, and users, whose browsers don't crash or chew up excess cycles and memory. Sadly, though, not Android users, who are unwitting Adobe consumers.

Hotspotting et al

Android will also support hotspotting, or wifi sharing funneled into its 3G or 4G network, of up to eight other devices. I'm not sure if you've done any serious work on 3G yet, but it's slow.

The prospect of using one 3G account to support other Internet-hungry devices is like expecting a pygmy to carry weightlifters: backbreaking at best and otherwise i

It doesn't support case-sensitive HFS+, so for those of us who use a non-toy configuration,

From developer.apple.com:
HFSX is an extension to HFS Plus to allow additional features that are incompatible with HFS Plus. The only such feature currently defined is case-sensitive filenames. (Emphasis added).

It's not supposed to be compatible. At all. This is like complaining about KDE not compiling properly with a "perfectly sane" configuration of Hurd running on ARM. Even Adobe's CS2 and CS3 applications don't run at all on an HFSX volume.

The n900 has flash 9.4 support. Android 2.2 supports 10.1

Despite this fact, my HTC Hero(thank you sprint, you're wonderful) has had flash support since I bought it last year.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/articles/htchero.html

So far as I can see, this is the end of HTML5 codec wars - if IE, Firefox, Chrome and Opera are all going to support it, it has the critical mass to become a de facto standard

Alright, so this is the final nail in the coffin, for sure - Adobe has announced support for VP8 streaming in Flash. This means that providers can switch to VP8/WebM completely, using HTML5 for newer browsers, and Flash as a fallback for older ones.

Instead of another exe/dll/.o to load things you use your existing browser. Assuming your browser understands all of HTML 5. (Hint- look up Canvas and Microsoft) And that it has the proper codecs to understand video. I use Firefox- do I need to give up on Youtube?

It lets search engines search thru the metadata and help categorize your website (if you like that sort of thing). And this is different from Flash how?

It allows for changing the behavior by end users instead of being controlled by the producer (which may or may not be a good thing depending on your world view). This comment is nonsensical. Changing what behavior? If you mean that you can see all the HTML5 source, that might be useful for some but there are an awful lot of folks out there doing commercial work that won't be happy about that.

I am excited about the web again (it has been awhile). I cant wait to see what new things people will cook up. This tech demo is just the sort of thing that makes the web cool. The web's always been cool. Check out some Flash sites- they've been doing the same stuff you're so excited about for the past five years. (Hint- Flash is used for more than video, games and ads) When something like Kaltura ports itself to HTML 5 then I'll start to be impressed

You can use completely free and open source tools to create high-quality Flash content. For example, you can use the combo of Sun's JDK, the Free & Open source FlashDevelop IDE (Microsoft .NET 2.0 required) and Adobe's Open Source Flex SDK.

You can apply for and grab a free copy of Flash Builder if unemployed here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/free/index.html. It's free of university use too (students & faculty).

Although I think Apple can truly be a-holes...

'We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs,' the letter states.

I can't play Flash in the Lynx browser. I can't play Flash on the Atari Lynx either, but that doesn't even have internet connectivity, let alone a web browser. Sorry Adobe, what's you point again?

'No company — no matter how big or how creative — should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web.'

Adobe, just so we're clear on this, you are dumb-asses. Your own Flash 10.0 EULA excludes Apple from including Flash on their iPod/iPhone/iPad platform:

3.1 Adobe Runtime Restrictions. You will not use any Adobe Runtime on any non-PC device or with any embedded or device version of any operating system. For the avoidance of doubt, and by example only, you may not use an Adobe Runtime on any (a) mobile device, set top box (STB), handheld, phone, web pad, tablet and Tablet PC (other than with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and its successors), electronic billboard or other digital signage, Internet appliance or other Internet-connected device, PDA, medical device, ATM, telematic device, gaming machine, home automation system, kiosk, remote control device, or any other consumer electronics device, (b) operator-based mobile, cable, satellite, or television system or (c) other closed system device. For information on licensing Adobe Runtime for use on such systems please visit http://www.adobe.com/go/licensing.

In other words, you're launching a public humiliation campaign against Apple in an effort to extort licensing fees from them. Way to go.

Although I think Apple can truly be a-holes...

'We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs,' the letter states.

I can't play Flash in the Lynx browser. I can't play Flash on the Atari Lynx either, but that doesn't even have internet connectivity, let alone a web browser. Sorry Adobe, what's you point again?

'No company — no matter how big or how creative — should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web.'

Adobe, just so we're clear on this, you are dumb-asses. Your own Flash 10.0 EULA excludes Apple from including Flash on their iPod/iPhone/iPad platform:

3.1 Adobe Runtime Restrictions. You will not use any Adobe Runtime on any non-PC device or with any embedded or device version of any operating system. For the avoidance of doubt, and by example only, you may not use an Adobe Runtime on any (a) mobile device, set top box (STB), handheld, phone, web pad, tablet and Tablet PC (other than with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and its successors), electronic billboard or other digital signage, Internet appliance or other Internet-connected device, PDA, medical device, ATM, telematic device, gaming machine, home automation system, kiosk, remote control device, or any other consumer electronics device, (b) operator-based mobile, cable, satellite, or television system or (c) other closed system device. For information on licensing Adobe Runtime for use on such systems please visit http://www.adobe.com/go/licensing.

In other words, you're launching a public humiliation campaign against Apple in an effort to extort licensing fees from them. Way to go.

Sorry, that was the wrong link, I meant to link http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/

And functionality problems (which I don't see myself and I've been using it since it's available - especially since the Feb 2010 release) don't preclude the fact that Adobe is working on a 64bit final release for Linux. Given that your sentence was about a release, an alpha release definitely qualifies. Other platforms don't even have the relative "luck" of having a Flash release at all.

Don't get me wrong - I've been on the Flash hate bandwagon since 1998. I have it blocked by default, and only enable it when I really want to run something. Flash on debian 64bits has worked pretty reliably for me, especially when you consider it's an alpha release. You talk about bugs - maybe you should take a shot at visiting http://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer/ ? It's people like you that should give feedback about it, or the problems you are experiencing will never get fixed if it works for them as it works for me.

Given that their plan seems to be to release 64bits plugins for MacOS X, Windows and Linux, I'd say there is a good chance people will have proper working plugins by then. Of course, you're right that it's been a while (since Nov 2008, a full year and a half) since the first 64bit alpha, but they have been refreshing it on a regular basis.

Irix may be EOL, but lots of people still use it. It's a "choice". It's also still receiving (believe it or not) security updates. It has to, SGI continues to sell used Origin hardware. They actually make quite a bit of money off it. I used to work for SGI, and still have lots of friends inside.

Here's the list of Adobe provided flash players: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/ Find me BSD on there, I must have missed it.

I admitted in the first reply that I screwed up on Solaris. Well before anyone else pointed out my mistake. I'd edit the post, but, well, it's Slashdot.

64 bit Linux has an Alpha Flash player. It's been in Alpha for *years*. It's a piece of crap, even by the standards of Flash players. I mention in a post above (also pointing out the 64 bit Linux Player) that it's so bad that a Windows VM running on top of my Linux OS plays Flash video better than the natively running Flash player. That's not support.

The HPUX player (see my link above) is not supported by Adobe. Again, not a common OS, but that's not the point is it. Adobe wants anyone "regardless of what computer they have" to experience the web.

Having Adobe supporting a specific platform isn't enough, they need to provide quality too. Just look at the 32 bit Linux flash player crashing and hogging CPU. And instead trying to actually try to get it perform fine, the devs just rant about their unability to make things work properly on Linux, blaming the APIs.

Having Adobe supporting a specific platform isn't enough, they need to provide quality too. Just look at the 32 bit Linux flash player crashing and hogging CPU. And instead trying to actually try to get it perform fine, the devs just rant about their unability to make things work properly on Linux, blaming the APIs.

Bail out Adobe now, write your senators, frack, just call up Obama and get a new bailout going.

-- "98% of enterprises rely upon Flash Player" -- http://www.adobe.com/choice/flash.html

If Apple is allowed to "undermine this next chapter of the web" then 98% of enterprises WILL FAIL!

(ahem, Apple is doing a hella lot more to support the NEXT chapter of the web, rather than hold it in the current chapter of the web ... this argument is about native applications on the iPhone OS, NOT THE WEB!!!)

...

We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs. No company — no matter how big or how creative — should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web. ...

We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.

via Our thoughts on open markets I Adobe.

Here, Chuck Geschke and John Warnock are simply dishonest.

One playing field is the open web which Apple is clearly and strongly fostering with it's development of WebKit as a leading standards supporting rendering engine now seen in use by all major mobile operating systems save Microsoft's. Apple is clearly supporting web standards which actually do run on any device you choose. Adobe on the other hand is clearly digging a Flash pit wherein everything remains the same. It's been talk talk talk about a version of mobile flash. I'm glad web standards are stepping up to the plate and being moved forward by Adobe's inability to deliver.

The other field is in regard to native applications. This is a very different war then claiming Apple is attempting to "undermine this next chapter of the web. I find myself strongly agreeing with Apple on one hand — I have used platforms held hostage by companies other than the original vendor and have seen the lack of progress ceding control, the control Apple is enforcing with section 3.1.1 and like Steve Jobs agree that John Gruber really nails it in his post which walks a line of rationality not seen in most corners of our daily lives. On the other hand I find some agreement with another premise – that a developer should be able to deliver a product in any

You can't publish such a weighty document full of error, sign it, post it with your chuckling portraits and believe you've won the day. This is desperate.

Or 64bit linux. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/64bit.html

Adobe doesn't have any business telling Apple that they're acting too proprietary because they refuse to open up the Flash spec.

Flash spec

There you go. I guess they do have a right now, right?

Specifically, I'm referring to things like college kids downloading the full version of Photoshop. There's no way those kids are shelling out $500 (or whatever it is) for a full Photoshop license. If they steal it, they just wouldn't have it at all.

Photoshop CS5 extended costs only 200 USD for college kids. http://www.adobe.com/go/buyphotoshop_edu

In most of the cases they should be fine with any other graphical editor without CMYK support. If college kids care about CMYK support, they are no longer college kids.

I didn't see any "Terms Of Service" at all? I just googled "adobe swf format", got this page: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ Which let me download a PDF without agreeing to any license. There are no mentions of "Terms Of Service" in the Gnash FAQ, though they do reference the EULA which is included with Adobe tools, however as I linked above, you can download the SWF format specification without agreeing to anything and without installing any Adobe tools.

But what was Adobe's plan for handling video in flash? Simply to turn it over to the iphone video control for playback. They were never going to "accelerate" anything on the iphone. This is exactly how the video tag works, without the middleman.

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Applications_for_iPhone

Vector graphics. scaling bitmaps. canvas tag. They all work well on the iphone in the browser or native apps.

You seem to think Flash is actually being converted to Objective C source code. This isn't the case. If it were, that would be the best of both worlds. But it ain't.

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Applications_for_iPhone

Wow, talk about needing a "-1, factually incorrect" moderation option. Check out http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/257187093/pie-guy if you have an iPhone or iPod touch (not sure about iPad, and if you're on a desktop, at least you can watch a video of it). I'm only posting this one example because I see there are already other replies with additional examples.

Also, check this out: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/mobile_demos_fp10.1/popup18.html It's a Flash game being played on a touch device. But look how simple it is! It's just a very basic tower defense game that can be played with just taps. No fast and accurate mousing or keyboarding needed. Even if Flash were working 100% on mobile devices, most current games wouldn't work ANYWAY!

I know this thread is about HTML5 versus Flash, not WIMP versus touch UIs, but it's related because this is where the world is going. Once upon a time there were relatively few computers--mainframes and such--and when they went to desktops, the number of computers in use grew by several orders of magnitude. Now everyone in the world who wants a desktop or laptop has one, and we're moving away from general-purpose computers to more limited computer-based devices and the number of users will again grow greatly. You say "Show me an even remotely decent HTML5-based game on par with a remotely decent Flash-based game" and I'll say "Show me a 'remotely decent Flash-based game' that's playable on a touchscreen device in the first place."

Speaking of mobile devices... Smartbooks have failed to materialise due to delays in Flash optimisation [emphasis mine], a lower-than-expected uptake of Linux on netbooks, and the sudden emergence of tablets, ARM's marketing chief has said.

"I think one reason is to do with software maturity. We've seen things like Adobe slip -- we'd originally scheduled for something like 2009." ARM and Adobe signed a partnership in late 2008 that was intended to see Flash Player 10 and Air -- both rich web platforms -- optimised for ARM-based systems. That work is only likely to come to fruition in the second half of this year, when an optimised version of Flash comes out for Android smartphones.

speed once started. Needing to compile only influences one of these.

Wrong. Pre-compilation taking as long as you like is, in the optimised case, going to be better than JIT, which must also take into account compilation time. This isn't even like Java on the server, where you have to worry about time wasted at server startup: this is every time some guy visits your page.

You know the best way to test whether your site sucks? Test it on a 10 year old setup. Current Javascript-based sites make my 900MHz Celeron cry, while Flash was already doing similar business back then.

On the other hand, only Adobe can write a Flash interpreter.

False. The Flash spec is open, and anyone can write a Flash SWF parser and interpreter. You've got the added advantage that the wrangling interests of a few corporations don't get to impose a convoluted mish-mash standard, as is the case with HTML5 (which is why there's never a full conforming implementation of any recent W3C standard). You'd be reasonable to argue that the one-corporation-controlling model of Flash, like .NET or Java or any other number of successful VMs, is not optimal either :-).

It seems the biggest effect Flash video has is to make playing streaming video impossible on low-power systems

Not really. It's not like the decoder which is actually doing the video processing is written in interpreted VM bytecode.

I don't like Flash much, but that's because it lacks decent DOM integration (like Apple's canvas) and because Adobe's implementations suck and they've taken way too long to implicitly admit that their standard needs to have good competing implementations. All the Apple-based arguments are bullshit, however.

For information on licensing Adobe Runtimes for use or distribution on devices see http://www.adobe.com/licensing.

Adobe is at liberty to license their software however they see fit. It's the same thing that allows the copyright holders of a GPL program to distribute a proprietary version next to the FLOSS version.

Adobe is probably offering Apple a very generous licensing agreement that does allow Apple to distribute it for the iPad "web pad"/tablet.

What you are describing is a "Just In Time" interpreter, just like Java does. Unless I missed something. Nothing new, and it doesn't change my point.

Yes, you miss something. It's not just-in-time, and I've no idea where in my words you saw that. It's a native ahead-of-time compiler. Go ahead and read for yourself.

As for the stock apps, did you notice how they had a full access to the phone? They do not live in jails. That doesn't change my point either

Your point that I replied to was that an application can assume that it is the only one running due to the lack of multitasking, and that it is somehow beneficial for application developer.

That doesn't change my point either, which is that Apple wants to keep 3rd party apps into jails, and that Adobe Flash wants to take that job over

Where did you get the idea that Flash wants to "jailbreak"? The applications it produces are plain iPhone apps, that don't have any permissions that more conventional apps don't have.

By the way, same applies to any interpreters. If a process has certain permissions, making it interpret code doesn't allow it to circumvent those permissions in any way.

Adobe took the risk that it could save flash, but to no avail

Yah; I see what you mean.

Why is that notable? leaving out the first gen mini? Since the tools to actually create flash content require signficantly newer machines than a powermac from 2005.. that seems to me to be a silly ass comment.. just because there are alot of older macs still in service.. doesn't mean that "new stuff" will always run on it? I am sure that at some point in time every development enviroment will move on from "requires at least a 386 with floating point unit" Also your pullout pretty much proves my point? 700$ is more expensive than 499+ 99.. The flex sdk is not capable of generating .ipa apps ready for submission to the app store.. its more on par with the xcode/iphone sdk package which like the flex sdk.. is also free to download.. but useless without the rest of the package (a recent vintage mac or repurposed pc running OSX) I would also argue that http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/systemreqs/ pretty much is no different than requiring at least a 2006 or newer intel mac.. In short all of this is pointless to the discussion

?

SWF format is a (mostly) open specification: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/

Flash _Player_ is closed, but nobody forces you to use it. See? You have a choice.

MPlayer can take advantage of some extensions that Flash can not. For example MPlayer can dump out video via X Video because most video content is in the YUV colour space. Flash works in RGB so it can't use X Video. Even if Flash is playing YUV video it has to be converted to RGB to be mixed with other graphical elements which in turn are sitting inside a plugin which may or may not be windowed. Flash does benefit from OpenGL hardware acceleration but as I mentioned, Linux hardware acceleration sucks. Even with hardware acceleration are caveats that it doesn't work compositing extensions like compiz.

This is a good article on the issue of video playback and flash.

BTW I sound like a Flash apologist - I'm not and I hate Flash ads as much as the next person. But I think it's fair to counter the "Flash sucks" arguments when there are plenty of technical issues imposed by various platform that deserve their fair share of the blame. It's more prevalent when discussing OS X, but as I hope the article makes clear, Linux is not absolved either. I think Flash works a lot better on Windows simply because the platform is a better host for it.

I gave up a long time ago waiting on browsers to support this font and that font... now i just embed them with flash using sIFR

From sIFR's manual:

To export your new typeface, open the sifr.fla file (which is included with the download) in Flash Professional

From adobe.com:

Flash Professional: $699

So I see sIFR as appropriate for sufficiently large commercial web sites (which can claim a copy of Flash as a business expense) but not for personal or otherwise non-commercial web sites.

Adobe actually talks about this here: http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2010/01/solving_different_problems.html

I am not seeing any phone that currently supports the whole flash experience: http://www.adobe.com/mobile/supported_devices/ Just the Flash Lite option.

That list is a little out of date. The Nokia N900 runs the desktop version of Flash 9.

On the other hand, many flash games require more CPU than a mobile device can really provide at the moment.

They can and they have - at least the technical constraints.

I am not seeing any phone that currently supports the whole flash experience: http://www.adobe.com/mobile/supported_devices/ Just the Flash Lite option.

I don't understand exactly how all this hangs together, but since Adobe open-sourced the Tamarin VM, would it be possible for Flash to instead use Chromes V8 engine? And if so, then Flash would benefit from performance improvements courtesy of Google.

And... (and this is the biggie)... since Apple have already allowed Opera with it's own JavaScript engine**, and Apple already include their own JS engine, what excuse could they give not to allow Chrome+Flash on iPhone|iPad|iPod?

It's clear [to me anyway] that Google are including Flash not to piss Apple off, but to (1). ensure stability of Chrome Browser and by extension, Android and ChromeOS, and (2). to make it easier for OEMs to include Android/ChromeOS as well as Flash and have everything manage updates automatically.

Since Google is doing all the leg-work to make Flash fast and stable, this would seem to address all of Steve Jobs'es issues with Flash.

I predict fun interesting times ahead! :D

**except... as I'm writing this, I've just remembered that Opera on iPhone is Opera Mini, and I'm not 100% sure that does include any JS engine?

Not true.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/nokia_s60.html

I read Steve Fulton's article that you linked. The gist is that nobody has yet written support libraries for Canvas-based game development.

On top of the fact that there aren't support libraries, it's also that the core API doesn't support basic functionality needed by game developers (such as playing two copies of the same sound simultaneously -- I.E. gunshots or explosions).

My cousin. He and others in his position have far more time than money, which is why they stick to Free or otherwise free tools. Imagine a high school student on summer break whose school isn't on the list of schools that get a discount on Flash CS5. These people are likely to be the people who write the support libraries that Canvas currently lacks.

Then he might be one of the people who is interested in the free and open-source compiler that Adobe released several years back. FlashDevelop is one of the best free tools for doing Flash development, though there are many many others.

I developed several games in Flash before I ever paid a single dime to Adobe -- using only free and open-source tools.

If you can find an actual game developer who prefers HTML5 over Flash (based on their development experiences)

My cousin. He and others in his position have far more time than money, which is why they stick to Free or otherwise free tools. Imagine a high school student on summer break whose school isn't on the list of schools that get a discount on Flash CS5. These people are likely to be the people who write the support libraries that Canvas currently lacks.

Flash wasn't built for mobile devices.

If you want it to suck cycles on your desktop or most laptops, that's not a problem, for your PC or Mac has them and electrical power to spare, generally.

But Flash sucks the electrical life out of mobile devices. This isn't theory, it's fact. Take your laptop off AC power and see it die after a few YouTube videos or Flash games.

Flash 10.1 is built for mobile devices, as was Flash Lite -- which was just a bit limited, but it's been around for about 9 years,. 10.1 takes full advantage of GPU acceleration for both video playback and drawing vectors, which helps out for both performance and battery life.

All the devices that are supporting 10.1 allow full access to the GPU, so battery life is no more an issue for Flash on them, than any other platform, it will come down to the competence of the developer, not the toolkit itself.

On this note, Apple deliberately held back the APIs that Flash needed to access the GPU on the Mac, so video playback could never be as efficient as Apple's Quicktime. So for Apple to call Flash a battery/CPU hog, is them speaking out of both sides as they're the ones that prevented my Macs from being as efficient as my PC for any video playback via Flash.

I'm not against Flash. I'm against it on devices that must be reliable and are built with limited processor and electrical power.

If that's true and you're not against Flash, then at least educate yourself, because the last half of your sentence is either ignorance of FUD; http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/mobile_demos_fp10.1.html

Flash is the Web standard of .NET. It's sloppy. It's developer hasn't made great inroads to optimize it or secure it. It is flexible, but some of its features make little sense on a multi-touch screen. And only Adobe makes it.-

Thanks for assuming all developers are the same. I'm going to apply your logic to the App Store. Because I've encountered more than a few crap apps, so according to you, all developers including my self that have worked in XCode via OBjective c are sloppy. Thanks for the assumption... What shall I assume about you?

On the touch-screen, like Apple's toolkit, Flash has evolved to support multi-touch, which is why 10.1 is a big deal for mobile devices. This whole point has been moot from the get go and only really an issue because most are really quite ignorant and don't care to look for the facts.

If Adobe wants to side with another platform for Flash AND make it work, great. But apparently Apple doesn't want to be Adobe's guinea pig and it has every reason not to.

Nice, do you always throw out passive aggressive insults?

Apple has already dealt before with competitors both inside and out who change their business plan and as a result, leave Apple twisting in the wind. It's good business practice not to let your business become overly dependent on others. Hell, Adobe was in that situation when Apple began to flounder. So why would Apple emulate Adobe in that regard?

To all their own... You know what bothers me about Apple's business model, it's that with their closed and limited devices, they're trying to dictate what should or not be allowed on the web in general. They don't want Flash, so they're taking the stance that no one should have it.

As for Flash on the Android? Let's see it, then. What doesn't kill your phone only makes it stronger.

Perhaps Apple will have Billy Dee Williams in for some endorsements, standing over a person with a locked, overheated phone.

" Problem with your Droid? "

Now you're just being a troll.

Flash is a closed standard.

Flash is partially open - Adobe has provided the .swf spec for everything but the proprietary video codecs, which are not technically "Flash."

interesting, but doesn't help Adobe's position.

But even if it was and open standard, H.264 would still beat it quite handily in video quality and file size (bandwidth).

See above - video codecs are not the same thing as Flash. This is essentially the same situation as QuickTime being an "open" standard supporting closed codecs.

I understand its not a codec, and in fact Flash can deliver H.264 video, but your point is irrelevant as Flash and H.264 are competing as video delivery methods for the spot in HTML5 (H.264 already won, btw). So it is understood we are comparing Flash (not a codec), to H.264 (a video codec) in regards to what their function is in this case: web video delivery. Flash CAN duplicate exactly the quality of H.264 because it can deliver H.264... but it will necessarily take up more bandwidth to do it, because it is a superfluous wrapper to a codec that could operate without Flash.

Flash is a closed standard.

Flash is partially open - Adobe has provided the .swf spec for everything but the proprietary video codecs, which are not technically "Flash."

But even if it was and open standard, H.264 would still beat it quite handily in video quality and file size (bandwidth).

See above - video codecs are not the same thing as Flash. This is essentially the same situation as QuickTime being an "open" standard supporting closed codecs.

Not only that, but the main official compiler most developers use is 100% open source (versus artists, who tend to use the closed source IDE to draw and animate). http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK

Quick tip: Adobe Flash 10.1 plays Youtube video much better than the official 10.0, both on Windows and Linux. My humble Athlon CPU now sits at about 80-90% instead of a constant 100%, and playback isn't choppy.

Sadly no AMD64 build yet, so non-i386 users are still stuck with 10.0 for now.

And the funniest thing about this, is that now that Adobe has a reason to update the software to cocoa, whispers out of Cupertino hint towards a new API that will be soon required for Mac OS and all it's mobile iterations.

Perhaps if Apple had been a little more forthcoming in their roadmap, Adobe would have been more motivated, but Apple's natural secretiveness put Adobe in a tough spot.

Adobe isn't exactly known for their open source efforts, but they do a hell of a lot more of it than Apple does

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/site/Projects

http://www.apple.com/opensource/

That is a very interesting definition of "more" you must be using. It does not appear to correspond in any factual way to the definition of "greater quantity" which a reality-based person would expect.

Well guess what? No only does the iPhone support great h.264 video, sites like YouTube, NYT, and Facebook are transcoding to it, and it looks BETTER than those sites look in Flash on the desktop, using only a tiny fraction of the processing power.

[Citati... hell, screw this, I'll answer it directly rather than cop out on it.

Youtube didn't just start transcoding to H.264. They were already doing it. Guess what! Flash supports H.264 decoding!

So no, it doesn't "look BETTER" because it's the exact same video feed. As for the "tiny fraction of the processing power" you should try Flash Player 10.1 on a computer. You know, the version that adds hardware H.264 decoding.

So, if I write a browser plugin or standalone program that implements the SWF file format (PDF), it won't work? Why?

If it's a browser-based app written in JavaScript, it will likely be unusably slow. If it is written in Objective-C, Apple will reject it the way it rejects any other interpreter.

H.264, which is what Apple is advocating to use for video on the web instead of Flash

Not entirely accurate. For one thing, Flash uses H.264 in either the FLV container or the MP4 container. For another, Flash's original reason for existence was vector animation, and these become much bigger when transcoded to H.264.

[H.264] is not an open standard either.

At least the specification is published and the patents are available under a uniform royalty license, as opposed to relying exclusively on a case-by-case negotiated license.

Flash is closed, it is not an open standard. If adobe closed up tomorrow the amount of flash that we rely on would become a problem. Right now a fully featured internet experience depends on using a platform that is supported by a single company that produces a non open plug in. If your platform isn't supported by Adobe, or isn't supported well, you are out of luck when it comes to using the internet. If your platform isn't well supported by Apple that doesn't make nearly as big of a difference when it comes to your internet experience (though quicktime can be an issue, at least there are tons of other options for streaming video).

So, if I write a browser plugin or standalone program that implements the SWF file format (PDF), it won't work? Why?

H.264, which is what Apple is advocating to use for video on the web instead of Flash, is not an open standard either. Even worse, companies that make media players and web browsers that support it have to pay a license fee. Except for companies like Apple that own patents used in it.