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Apple's Change of Heart On Flash
Dotnaught writes "In a blog post, Walter Luh, co-founder of Ansca Mobile and a former employee of both Apple and Adobe, recounts how Apple once promoted Flash on the iPhone then changed its mind because Flash didn't provide the optimal mobile user experience. 'I think that Apple came to the same conclusion I've come to — namely that Flash has its strengths, but not when it comes to creating insanely great mobile experiences,' he writes. Luh's piece ends with a pitch for mobile development using the Corona SDK, a Lua-based programming environment that strives to recapture the simplicity of early versions of Flash."
Adobe Flash will die rather sooner than later and it won't be missed. Now if only all browser vendors could agree on a video codec for HTML5.
Live streaming using H.264 seemed to work just dandy watching the State of the Union address on my iPhone while using the Whitehouse.gov iPhone app. Also seems to work great with MLB At-Bat on the iPhone as well. I watched many baseball games last season streaming live H.264 video to the iPhone.
... to a mobile device, without using Flash. Go on, try it. I'm waiting.
In that case I imagining the existence of solutions for the iPhone that do just that. France24, YouTube and StreamToMe being three examples. I can concede there is room for improvement, but there are solutions, if the installed customer base is of interest to you.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Hulu sells advertising in their feeds, Apple does not.
It's all about money indeed.
Silverlight does not stream any video to my Linux machine. Of course it should, but somehow it doesn't. Weird isn't it, even though there is this moonlight thingy, the most important internet application somehow does not work right. So Silverlight is basically just working on Windows (and I presume, Windows mobile). Da Silva, I know you are reading, care to comment on that?
Live streaming using H.264 seemed to work just dandy watching the State of the Union address on my iPhone while using the Whitehouse.gov iPhone app. Also seems to work great with MLB At-Bat on the iPhone as well. I watched many baseball games last season streaming live H.264 video to the iPhone.
But can you do it with a generic app which will connect to any server?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If Apple really cared about empowering the user in the style, manner, and spirit of their legendary 1984 commercial, they would make Flash available -- or rather allow Adobe to make it available -- on the iPhone, Touch, and iPad, and allow the user to decide which user experiences work best for them.
Apple only cares about profits and control these days, having become the very thing they once railed against.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What about all the browser applications written in flash? Will we just not have them?
ActionScript is ECMAScript with the Flash DOM. JavaScript is ECMAScript with the HTML DOM. One major point of HTML 5 is to make the HTML DOM as rich as that of Flash, in hopes that the next version of a web application will be written in JavaScript instead of ActionScript. YouTube is one of them; if you're running Safari, Chrome, or IE + Chrome Frame, you can switch it from Flash to HTML 5.
Why can't they let us decide?!
This.
Also, Flash is a programming language. Apple doesnt allow programming languages onto iPods, iPhones, or iPads.
Flash could replace a large majority of whats on the App Store.
"His name was James Damore."
Enjoy it while you can:
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/blog/ADverse_Atkinson_on_Advertising/23941-Chase_Carey_Hulu_to_Charge_in_2010.php?nid=2228&source=title&rid=6454445
This seems pretty true. In theory x264 can encode content with very low latency[1], and delivering MPEG-4 from previously encoded files is pretty easy, but my search-fu can't find any ready made solution for streaming using RTSP that doesn't involve paying through the nose for the software---although hacking something together with x264 seems very doable.
I don't know about how easy it is with Theora, but it doesn't really matter since it has had no impact on the mobile device market whatsoever.
[1]: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=249
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
What a strange comment, you just make larger buttons for a finger to press them. The same way all interfaces work on a mobile platforms.
meep
"Flash has its strengths, but not when it comes to creating insanely great mobile experiences" Nothing really creates insanely great mobile experiences, mobile is far more about functionality then experience because it is such a limiting platform. Most of our clients looking for iphone apps are trying to scale down the full experience to a limited set of core functionality that supports a sometimes connected, highly relevant, supplement to the richer web desktop/laptop experiences. As much as people want to say that HTML5 richness can keep up with Flash, I've already tried to start some benchmarks to see where the performance gaps are. http://craftymind.com/factory/guimark2/HTML5ChartingTest.html http://craftymind.com/factory/guimark2/FlashChartingTest.html To give some perspective, the iphone renders the HTML5 test at about 0.5 fps.
Da Silva, I know you are reading
Are you talking about Miguel de Icaza or someone else?
...security.
Seriously - with all the active exploits out there that use Flash as a way into an operating system, I can very easily see a Flash bug being exploited to bust right through the iPhone's 'walled garden' setup (what with it's default root password and all...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Is there something that I'm missing?
Knowledge of how large companies stagnate. It's all bureaucratic BS.
I'm sure there's a team at Adobe that wants to optimize flash - but they're probably being blocked by the higher ups that refuse to cut backwards compatibility.
Flash performance is horrible on any computer. Youtube used to be smooth on my old 2.2ghz Athlon XP, but now it barely plays. Even my 3.5ghz Athlon II has occasional stutters.
How old is your dual core? A lot of Mac processor are woefully out of date. If you're running a Core 2 Duo from 2006 then I bet just about everything sucks. Also, people used to complain that Flash wasn't taking advantage of multiple cores, now it seems they complain that it does. Good old Slashdot. The Flash hate continues unabated.
meep
It's no wonder that Flash which acts as a gateway to a mass of free content from across the world might be considered "non optimal". After all, Apple has to think of the poor consumers who would be "confused" by all the choice that countless non-Apple alternatives would cause.
apple likes it lock down and lock in app store and free flash games are bad for that.
I would consider it a feature, especially since 99% of flash content I see is actually advertising (and it's literally plastered over sites. Countless flash adverts loading their own stupid videos etc. Good riddance)
While I agree with you, that is somewhat Apple's fault. On Windows, Flash makes use of hardware decoding for H.264, if available. On Mac OS X, it does not. In Flash 10, H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported on OS X because Apple does not expose access to the required APIs.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Agreed that Flash needs to be replaced, but not with HTML 5.
For general "rich internet application" stuff, moving from proprietary Flash to standards-based HTML5 (+DOM/SVG/ECMAScript) should be good news for open source. The problem is not HTML 5 per se but that the only video codec that seems to be gaining widespread support in HTML 5 is the patent-encumbered H.264.
Newer versions of Flash look like shifting H.264 as the codec for video anyway (albeit with different packaging), so Flash vs. HTML5 is a non-issue on the video front.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Having old hardware should NOT be an issue when you are hitting a web page.
And its not just flash that is the issue. The entire mindset you just displayed is the core of the problem.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
there is no ARM version of Flash. Let's repeat that: there is no ARM version of Flash; it does not run on any ARM based system.
False:
Guess which architecture the Nexus One and Droid run on?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Now regarding performance, given identical hardware, Flash Player on Windows has historically been faster than the Mac, and it is for the most part the same code running in Flash for each operating system. We have and continue to invest significant effort to make Mac OS optimizations to close this gap, and Apple has been helpful in working with us on this. Vector graphics rendering in Flash Player 10 now runs almost exactly the same in terms of CPU usage across Mac and Windows, which is due to this work. In Flash Player 10.1 we are moving to CoreAnimation, which will further reduce CPU usage and we believe will get us to the point where Mac will be faster than Windows for graphics rendering.
Video rendering is an area we are focusing more attention on -- for example, today a 480p video on a 1.8 Ghz Mac Mini in Safari uses about 34% of CPU on Mac versus 16% on Windows (running in BootCamp on same hardware). With Flash Player 10.1, we are optimizing video rendering further on the Mac and expect to reduce CPU usage by half, bringing Mac and Windows closer to parity for video.
http://www.object404.com
The true reason why Apple won't allow Flash to run on the iPad is the same as the reason why they won't allow any standalone emulators into the App Store: it doesn't want software running on these platforms that they haven't specifically approved. Everything else is just them rationalizing their basic prohibition on virtual machines.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Uh there's more than video. Please don't say Java can do the rest that Flash does, if you take video away. The strength of a platform has much to do with the strength of its "editors". The Flash editor puts much power into the hands of designers, animators and "not really developers". You just can't do this with the bare bones technologies of HTML5 + this, + that, unless or until the accompanying "editors" for creating media catches up.
The problem solved by Flash video wasnt can I show a video? Instead, Flash solved can everyone watch my video? HTML5 video doesnt provide this solution; it just adds another approach to the incompatibility pile.
HTML5 isn't going to change things unless browser vendors agree on a common codec.
Also, unless HTML5's video spec finds a way to implement DRM on video stream playback (which Flash does), studios and major media content providers who want to protect their content aren't going to bite on "HTML5 video".
http://www.object404.com
With all due respect, that's bullshit. VLC decodes Youtube's streams (saved to disk) at 13% CPU. Flash takes 90%. I don't have a graphics chip that could decode H264 in hardware (apart from being programmable thru OpenCL, to which Adobe has all access in the world). Apple not exposing any APIs (to what?) is a red herring. To me this looks like slowness in the Flash interpreter, a shoddy video codec they implemented, and pure lazyness.
Actually, Flash Player has supported the playback of H.264 since 2007 and Flash Player is one of the biggest reasons why a lot of videos have now been encoded to H.264 on the web (H.264 used to be mostly only used for Blu-ray, not so much web videos).
A lot of people are confused about FLV. FLV is not a codec, it's a container. The video inside is usually encoded in Sorensen Spark, On2 VP6 or H.264.
http://www.object404.com
They have long been a "We know what's best for you," company. They decide what experiences they want to offer the user, and the user has very little choice in the matter. They tell you what you want, you just have to go along with it. If you don't like it, you go elsewhere.
That is one of the primary reasons I don't use Apple products. They don't offer what I want, and don't offer the ability to become what I want. So, I take my cash elsewhere.
Mike Melanson, the lead engineer of the Linux Flash Player team explains the technical challenges in his latest blog post, Solving Different Problems:
The Flash Player has to do a little bit more. In addition to decoding the data, it has to convert YUV data to the RGB colorspace and combine the image with other Flash elements. Then it has to cooperate with another application (web browser) to present the video to the user.
So the dedicated media player solves a problem: Generally, it plays linear media files from start to finish while allowing user interaction in the form of random seeking along the timeline. That's the most basic, trained monkey-type of labor in video playback. At most, the player might handle DVD menus.
Flash Player solves a different problem: It plays linear media files from start to finish while combining the video with a wide array of graphical and interactive elements (buttons, bitmaps, vector graphics, filters), as well as providing network, webcam, and microphone facilities, all programmable via a full-featured scripting language, and all easily accessible via a web browser using a plugin that most of the browsing population already has installed.
You seem to forget that video is not the only thing people use Flash for.
http://www.object404.com
Anyone who makes a site completely out of Flash should be _shot_. Repeatedly. In the face and crotch. If I'm using flashblock, I should still be able to see more than a site's copyright notification. Using flash to design a site beyond video is nothing more than ostentatiousness. First you use a little flash for an animated menu. Then you do a little more for a slideshow on the front page. Soon you're serving *all* your content that way, your site takes 30-45 seconds or MORE to load on a broadband connection, and there's a 10 second delay to navigate to a new area on the site. I expect that shit on dial-up, not a 3mbps or more connection. If you can't make a good site without Flash, fucking hire a professional or STAY OFF THE NET.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Interesting how Hulu (and others) provide free flash videos while the iTunes store provides videos for sale.
Hulu has already stated they're going to start charging in 2010.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
#DeleteChrome
And this is where you fail.
NO ONE GIVES A SHIT as long as what they want works for them.
People don't care about the technical way things do or don't work, they care that they can click/touch a button and watch a damn video. They could give a shit about open, they want 'works' first.
But to answer your question, yes, the way it works on the iPhone with video is an xml file on a web server describing what the URL is to the various available streams and describing the properties of those streams so the device can auto select.
Its all very well documented and easy to understand. The iPhone (and probably OS X though I didn't look into it) has an advantage in that it has a nice library that only needs to see the xml file and it'll do the rest for you. You'd need to reimplement that library else where, but its a fairly trivial XML file on the server to read to get at the rest of the streams.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
So let me get this straight ...
Apple needs to help Adobe, a large powerful software company, fix its flash player for OS X ... even though countless other 3rd party apps run fine in OS X and are more than happy to play video with practically no CPU usage at all?
I don't think you actually understand the difference between political posturing and bullshit, and the realities of writing software.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
There's only one reason why there's no Flash or Java on the iPhone - because you wouldn't be forced through the app store if they had either of them (unless they crippled them extensively like they were thinking about with Flash until people started pointing out - "uh, if the flash experience is the problem, why will you let the flash experience run on the iPhone only we still have to go through the app store?" - LOL ) and you wouldn't need Apple's development machines and environment to write software for it. If they could somehow get away with not implementing HTML5 (which they can't) you could rest assured it wouldn't be on the iPhone/iPad/iWhatever either.
I can't believe the number of people who lap up this Apple drivel - flash experience is poor? LOL, I wonder how it managed to get such huge market penetration and basically pervade every aspect and corner of the web - oh, I guess because it's crap, right Apple?
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"Adobe Is Lazy" : Apple’s Steve Jobs
Flash solved can everyone watch my video?
That is totally true. And much like Apple solved the "have to have DRM around online music sales" by being the only place to sell music (forcing studios to drop DRM in order to control price), Flash has thankfully gotten us to the point where everyone can watch video, encoded in h.264 (that's what the online flash video is almost all encoded in these days).
Flash made a great scaffolding, but it is time to drop that scaffolding and use a solution that is more performant and truly cross platform - h.264. And why is it more cross-platform? Because more chips that decode it in hardware mean more devices that can play that format than any format that would need a powerful CPU for decoding. The fact is it can simply run on way more platforms.
HTML5 isn't going to change things unless browser vendors agree on a common codec.
They have, it's h.264. That is all major browser vendors but one - Mozilla. While it's nice they are trying to take a stand and I have to admire them for that, the reality is Chrome will take away ALL of Mozilla's userbase in short order unless they go with the flow on this issue.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's all fine and dandy but all of the Safari crashs I've had in the past 2 years have been flash plug in related.
Secondly, watching a YouTube video at 480p on my 2.5GHz Core2 Duo takes ~35% of the CPU time available. Watching the same video using the HTML5 version, ~3% of the CPU time available. Even if they did drop it down to 16%, that is still a lot to make vertical mobile Hardware/Software vendors cringe at the power consumption.
Flash is cool because it has a large enough install base at this point you can say it is a compatible way to display rich media in a web page that displays on 99% of the computers in the US. I can't think of any other good things about flash, even if they fix the horrible CPU usage.