Slashdot Mirror
Flash Support Confirmed For Android 2.2
farble1670 writes "In an interview with the New York Times, Google's Andy Rubin confirmed that Android 2.2 will have support for Flash 10.1. Quoting: '[Rubin] promised that full support for Adobe’s Flash standard was coming in the next version of Android, code-named Froyo, for frozen yogurt (previous Android releases were called Cupcake, Donut, and Eclair, and are represented outside Building 44 on the Google campus with giant sculptures of the desserts). Sometimes being open "means not being militant about the things consumers are actually enjoying," he said.'"
Flash 10.1 uses hardware acceleration for video, so presumably battery life will be longer.
Also, on Adroid, Flash delivers better performance than HTML5/Canvas (http://visualrinse.com/2010/04/15/benchmarking-html5-vs-flash-player-10-1-on-mobile-devices/).
Regarding "some of its features make little sense on a multi-touch screen" -- nothing springs to mind, care to elaborate? It does have rollover support but that doesn't mean that you have to use it. It has multi-touch support too...
As for security... I can only recall 3 major flaws in the last 5 years; maybe there are more but it's still not more insecure than Java or IE.
Flash is a closed standard. But even if it was and open standard, H.264 would still beat it quite handily in video quality and file size (bandwidth).
Would a vector animation like Badgers really be smaller as H.264? The closest contender here involves scripting a <canvas>.
And I still find it funny that the whole "open" Android crowd is cheering that they get a closed plugin.
An open platform means anyone can develop for it, even proprietary software. Contrast it to Apple's closed platform, where you can't get that closed plugin because Steve has a chip on his shoulder. There are open source Flash players that could, theoretically, be ported to Android just as Adobe is doing (if anyone felt strongly enough about "closed plugins" that they were willing to port an open one). Again, that's something Steve won't let you do on the iPhone.
Also, most Android phones already ship with closed applications from Google. That's what the scuffle with Cyanogen was about, which is why installing CyanogenMod now involves backing up those closed apps and then restoring them after flashing the new OS.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
What was that whoosh? Low flying ducks again?
Damnit; of course Apple's signing is the only thing protecting us from the void. That's why networks with Symbian phones (where the user can install just about anything they want) collapse almost every day of the week. Nothing at all to do with Apple being a bunch of control freaks.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();