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Jobs Says Flash Video Not Suitable for iPhone
Lev13than writes "Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs said the iPhone won't be using Adobe Systems' Inc.'s popular Flash media player any time soon, saying the technology doesn't meet his company's performance standards for video. Jobs said the version of Flash formatted to personal computers is too slow on the iPhone while the mobile version of the media player is "is not capable of being used with the web." The comments come a day before Apple is set to introduce the company's plan for iPhone SDK, the software developers kit which will allow third-party developers to create applications that can work in conjunction with the popular handheld device."
It's much better on x86 -- it used to be absolutely horrid on the PowerPC platform. Given my past experience with Flash on non-x86 architectures, I'm not surprised that Flash on ARM isn't a high-performance solution.
Videos turn into a slideshow on my 2ghz Turion running Ubuntu. If you're not using a powerful processor on windows flash will suck for you. Which is probably why I see so much hate for adobe and flash around here since we have a lot of non-windows users on this site and the flash experience is terrible. Adobe needs to shape up and make the linux version work as good as the windows one.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Why is this a troll, its exactly what the problem is.
My n810 runs flash - badly - its advertised as working which it does but it drops frames with current implimentation.
iPhone/Apple users expect more and currently it can't be handled.
liqbase
Flash is a huge, huge CPU hog for playing videos. It is also not the only way to play flash videos.
I have done comparative performance tests.
In one corner: Youtube's flash-based player
In the other corner: Windows Media Player + Gabest's FLV Splitter + FFDSHOW.
When playing the same flash video, Flash took 40% CPU usage, and Windows Media Player took 5% CPU usage.
This just shows that Flash Player is extremely inefficient. Its performance gets much worse when showing a video in full screen.
...ie, your $600 toy has the CPU power of a TI-85. Enjoy playing text-mode Tetris on it, though... The iPhone is one of (if not the most) powerful smart phones on the market in terms of processing power. Or do you know of a smart phone that does support full Flash (not Flash Lite)? Extra points if the battery life is longer than ten minutes. Okay, that one doesn't even make sense. Unless it in some way requires use of the cellular-telephony-specific hardware in an iPhone, it will work "with the web", on a PC (or Mac, as the case dictates). He's referring to Flash Lite, which is typically used to provide a UI layer for mobile devices. It doesn't even support the most recent version of Actionscript (which has been out for almost two years). The mere idea of navigating any modern Flash website with Flash Lite makes me cringe - which is what he meant by "not capable of being used with the web." Once again, Master Steve turns the screws, and the fans will cry out, "Thank you sir, may I have another?" I do a fair amount of Flash development, and even I don't like the idea of Flash on my iPod Touch. If not having Flash on a mobile device is wrong, baby, I don't wanna be right.Has anyone seen Flash's Actionscript lately? AS3 is a respectable programming language (Flame away :P). Considering that Jobs never wanted an iPhone API at all, if he lets Flash on the iPhone, he'll be opening the door to a rival API that he has little control over.
Okay, that one doesn't even make sense. Unless it in some way requires use of the cellular-telephony-specific hardware in an iPhone, it will work "with the web", on a PC (or Mac, as the case dictates). I think he's alluding to the fact that the mobile version of flash just doesn't do the same things as the desktop version. I don't know the details, but there are significant gaps in functionality. There was a fairly recent version of flash which was more useful, on S60 at least, but, again, I don't know the technical details.
Here's something for you to read. Maybe it sheds some light on it.
Max.
at telling me I need a new version of it.
Requiring me to reboot my iMac to install that new version.
I think they make the windowms machines in my house reboot out of sympathy.
I have to agree with what you put forth. Compared to other players I have always found quicktime to be a dog, especially when embedded in a browsers
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Smarter people have blamed the atrocious coding in Adobe's flash interpreter. There's no excuse for busy-wait loops.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I was actually thinking mp4 would become the next baseline standard on the web, especially since it uses H.264 as the video codec by default. But until WMP actually includes support for it it will continue to just float around. Maybe Microsoft has been slow about it because it directly competes with wmv and doesn't lock people in?
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Chances are this has something to do with the X11 driver and the way Flash uses it, not Flash per-se. My Wii, which is a much poorer spec'd machine than your Pentium from the sounds of things, has no problems at all with Flash. Try the following:
The chances are that playback will be smooth as a baby's bottom. This, at least, is my experience on an 800MHz VIA C3 in my living room. "Slideshow" in the browser, "Smooth" when played with MPlayer. The problem isn't the Flash codec, it's something to do with the way Flash videos are pushed through the browser.
Now, my N800 with OS2008 does strain a little to play a Flash video perfectly smoothly, but on the other hand it's not a bad job and it's more than acceptable.
The CPU usage of Flash video isn't that great relatively speaking. It's just it's very easy to foul up playback.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It's not quite "exactly what the problem is."
First, using that language implies that the iPhone is underpowered, when it'd be more true to say that Flash is a bloated resource-hog. Second, people who've researched the problem suggest that the iPhone *could* run flash, but it'd drain battery life and present other interface problems.
The major point here is that Flash just isn't an appropriate technology for mobile devices. If you want video, h264 will provide great quality/batter-consumption (relative to other video formats). I still question whether Flash is an appropriate technology for anything, but we can discuss that at another time.