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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."
Yep, it'll be dead and replaced by HTML5, SVG, h.264, VRML and a host of other hot new technologies!
Oh and on the same day, Windows will lose it's marketshare position, Linus will relicense Linux under commercial terms, Richard Stallman will buy an iPad and Steve Jobs will switch to Ubuntu.
Imagine the possibilities!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
What about all the browser applications written in flash? Will we just not have them?
With any luck!
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Why can't they let us decide?!
"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.
If anything, HTML5 is actually the cause that might allow pushing Linux and Firefox even further away.
Basically the situation is currently this;
Microsoft: H.264 for IE (and they are already licensing it in Windows 7). Will not support Theora.
Apple: H.264 for all OS X, iPhone and iPad. Will not support Theora.
Google: H.264 for Chrome (but not for the open source version!). May roll out their own video codec, to mix things even a little bit more.
Mozilla: Theora for Firefox. There is no way they can use H.264 because of countless amount of open source forks. Could only possible support it in main binary Firefox, other users left without.
Opera: Theora. Could support H.264, but wants Theora more.
Develop a plugin that plays H.264 video inside browser to circumvent that Firefox situation? Flash already does exactly that.
Either HTML5 Video will seriously fail and Flash will continue dominating, or the big players will use it to push Firefox and other open source browsers and Linux off the market.
Do you really expect to win a rigged game by playing by the rules?
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".
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