Slashdot Mirror
Is Apple's Attack On Flash Really About Video?
jamiegau writes "Here we have a long and in-depth blog post analyzing the faults in Steve Jobs's Letter about Flash. The writer concludes with an interesting idea that it is all about online video."
Which is?
And don't say html 5 - have you played with that? I doesn't really seem ready to deliver RIA's like Java and Flash have been delivering for years because its buggy (what do you know - its an unfinished standard). I think this video illustrates it best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4
My own experience with html 5 video btw was buggy at best - anytime you paused you couldn't resume and had to reload the entire clip. His experience in that video above was it didn't work - because the video he tried to view was Theora/OGG - which the iPad/iPhone don't support.
But Adobe did find a way to make Flash work on Apple's devices - they added the ability to export Flash as native iPhone code.
Apple responded by changing their rules to require all iPhone apps to be orginally developed with Apple tools.
That's not about the constraints of the device - that's about artificial constraints created for business reasons.
All this discussion about Flash vs HTML5 seems to miss the point that Flash isn't just video - there are tons of apps and interfaces out there written in Flash - not just slideshows and ads. There are games, presentations, demos etc.
There is not a SINGLE content creation tool for HTML5 which can hold a candle to Adobe's flash authoring environment.
Flash only has three big uses on the web.
The first is video. Flash is not needed for video. It became the standard because it could do things the object tag couldn't, but it's not needed. The video tag does what most users need, and people will figure out ways to do the rest. For most users (who just want to see Hulu/Vimeo/YouTube/whatever), the video tag will be all they need. Flash isn't necessary here for most users (especially mobile).
The second is animations. There are some very impressive things done in HTML5 and JS, and most of the stuff I see on the web done with flash could be done in HTML5 (or really just needs a redesign). Very few sites do more than make objects show and hide and move around. iPhone users don't need a special plugin to use terrible interfaces, they should be made in HTML5 or have a simplified version available. So Flash isn't necessary here for most users, especially mobile.
Games are the best argument for flash, it's the standard and works well (when the programers know what they're doing and don't code an idle loop to use 100% CPU). Steve Jobs is right that a great many of these wouldn't work on the iPhone because of the keyboard and mouse expectations that can't be translated. Native code would work better, and being able to get to farmville but having a horrible time trying to play it would make iPhone users mad.
Games is the best reason Adobe has, I'd like to be able to play 'em on my iPhone some times. Steve is right that it's better for most users that the games get made for the device instead of trying to rejigger the interface.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
That's a pretty dang good point.
No, it's not..
Oh, that's right: VLC is developed by a megacorporation with close knowledge of Apple's secret internal APIs, and not a small team of Open Source developers. That's why their software can play back the same MP4 stream with 1/3 the CPU of Adobe's.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Except only Flash Lite has been running on most mobile devices, and so far not very well. They say its coming to Android, but I'll believe it when I see it, and can actually use it.
Adobe could have used the Core Video API to get hardware accelerated video playback. Its been available since 10.4, and its what everyone else uses.
No,
Tap and hold counts as hover, tap counts as click. Android has implemented this system from the start and is is quite easy to use. Amongst Android users it's known as "tap and hold" or the "long click" and is often used in lieu of a second mouse button (Android really is a phone sized computer, so it requires a "Windows XP" level of literacy to operate).
Is this level of sophistication beyond the Iphone?
But really, anyone who still claims the war on Flash is anything else then Apple maintaining dictatorial control over what runs on their Iphone is beyond deluded.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.