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Adobe Founders On Flash and Internet Standards
An anonymous reader points out an 18-month-old interview with the founders of Adobe (and creators of PostScript) Charles Geschke and John Warnock, and highlights three interesting quotes from the book Masterminds of Programming that seem very timely now. "'It is so frustrating that this many years later we're still in an environment where someone says if you really want this to work you have to use Firefox. The whole point of the universality of the Web would be to not have those kind of distinctions, but we're still living with them. It's always fascinating to see how long it takes for certain pieces of historical antiquity to die away. The more you put them in the browsers you've codified them as eternal, and that's stupid. ... With Flash what we're trying to do is both beef it up and make it robust enough so that at least you can get one language that's platform-independent and will move from platform to platform without hitting you every time you turn around with different semantics. ... You can see why, to a certain extent, Apple and Microsoft view that as a challenge because they would like you to buy into their implementation of how the seamless integration with the Web goes. What we're saying is it really shouldn't matter. That cloud ought to be accessible by anybody's computer and through any sort of information sitting out on the Web."
I disagree with "if you really want things to work, use Firefox". A number of businesses I have dealt with base their webpages primarily around IE, be it IE6 (which is still used although it needs to be killed with fire), or a later version. Ideally, it shouldn't matter what a user is using for a browser, but because customers use IE the most, the Web designers are told to design to make IE work first, Safari on iPhone second, Firefox or Safari third, and worry about the rest of the pack when time permits.
Now make your CS-software cross-platform, that would probably help a bit in that regard.
I'm not against flash, but i would like to be able to opt it out without losing any feature of the website i'm browsing. As i don't need/like flash based games and bloated intros, at the moment i got it installed just to watch embedded videos. One feature to go.
slashwhat?
We'd like you to buy into OUR implementation. That cloud ought to be accessible to anyone's computer - as long as they're running Flash.
Adobe wants a monopoly on content, and wants the OS to be commoditized. I want the whole platform to be commoditized - and that's why I support truly open standards.
If they really want to boost Flash adoption, they should make it open-source!! Or at the very least make cheap authoring tools that everyone can use. Flash isn't really all that multiplatform, b/c the authoring tools exist only for Windows and Mac ... where are the versions for Linux, BSD, Solaris?
399 more times.Then do a funny little dance and keel over to fail your astronavigation exam.
"It is so frustrating that this many years later we're still in an environment where someone says if you really want this to work you have to use Firefox"
You mean, like these pages that say "To watch that, you need Flash 10"?, I have found loot of these. Your propietary extension is not better than some people doing a XUL remote webapp. (full disclosure: I have released a few xul apps, look for Tei in sf)
-Woof woof woof!
With Flash what we're trying to do is both beef it up and make it robust enough so that at least you can get one language that's platform-independent and will move from platform to platform without hitting you every time you turn around with different semantics.
*sigh* another company claiming that what they're doing is "platform independent" because they've created versions for a few platforms. Just like Microsoft with their Silverlight technology, Flash isn't platform independent at all. Sure Adobe has created Flash for a few different platforms, just like MS has created a Mac-version of Silverlight, but at the end of the day, Flash only works on the platforms Adobe have decided to create a binary for.
What platform independence is all about, is that the platform is completely irrelevant. You know, like the web is supposed to be. Javascript doesn't care if it's running on an Intel chip or an ARM chip, it doesn't care if you're running it in Windows or Linux, it doesn't care which browser you are using. THAT is platform independence. Loading the approriate binary for your platform is not, especially if you can't create these binaries yourself in the case Adobe doesn't support your platform.
This is why Flash is terrible for the web. When websites rely heavily on Flash, it basically turns the web into an Adobe-only platform. That's terrible for everyone, no matter how Adobe is trying to sell it to you.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I'd rather be forced to use Firefox to view certain content, than Flash. At least Firefox is Open Source and WORKS FINE on all platforms it runs, and follow standards very closely without misinterpreting them. Neither can be said for Flash. Moreover, if it works with Firefox, it will work on pretty much all browsers that respect standards, unless you use XUL to develop the application, but then you're pretty much conscious you're doing a Gecko app, and not a standard web app.
Flash sucks, let it die, spit on it's tomb, for it's the biggest oppressor of the open web.
So i "need Firefox for this to work" and that's worse than needing Flash? Well, Firefox works on more platforms than Flash. Problem solved, not by Adobe tho.
Very eloquently put. Wish I had some mod points left.
"I'm sorry, if you really want to read this post you have to use Flash."
Adobe wants web content to just run anywhere? When the plugin they sell doesn't run everywhere and in places it does run, it often runs poorly?
Where is Flash for BSD? For AMD64? Oh, wait, when Adobe speaks about the net, they mean IE.
Adobe, the reason Apple hates your guts is because you never ever supported their OS properly until you absolutely had to.
Oh and I hate your guts too, just a little bit more then Steve Jobs in fact, so I hope he rapes your stinking rotting corpse and eats your babies. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is worth cheering on.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Correct. If Adobe had open sourced Flash right from the beginning and provided a free dev environment it may have been ubiquitous by now instead of being a glorified video codec. But the other reason Flash applications haven't taken off is simple - nobody whose opinion matters wants them to!
Microsoft is terrified by anything that would let it's locked-in customer base easily migrate to another desktop OS. Apple doesn't care so much, but would much prefer applications be developed specifically for MacOSX (and guards the iPhone like Fort Knox). The linux desktop people are busy with other stuff and distrust Adobe. The application developers would maybe like to use Flash (or maybe not) but are hindered by insane licensing fees. The only people (apart from Adobe) who really want Flash are Google, who stand to make more money if applications are pushed out onto the web. Google are the only ones who push out Flash with their browser, and include good Flash support in their mobile OS.
Adobe really tried to get people to develop whole applications in Flash, but I could never see a compelling reason to do this. HTML works well enough for most things (even more with HTML5), anything more demanding is maybe not a good candidate for implementing as a web-based application. Where is the Flash facebook or imdb? They don't exist because they wouldn't provide anything more than what we already have. Where is the cross-platform Flash email client? Nobody cares.
I don't mean to dump on Flash too much - it serves its purpose. Even with HTML5, Flash will still be used for games, advertising, and maybe video for years to come. But it will never be the all-encompassing platform that Adobe wants it to be.
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
This leads us to the root problem: Why is there no Flash binary for some relevant platforms (not talking about iP(hone|od|ad))? Flash is supposed to be a publicly available specification, isn't it? Well, it may be, but there is patented stuff in there and the spec is entirely under Adobe's control. Others have no say in it. Sun opened Java (after a long time of handling it much like Adobe still handles Flash), but Sun is no more, which might be a bit of a disincentive for Adobe following Sun's lead.
That said, even as an open platform, Flash would still suck. Flash "documents" or "apps" are binary blobs. That's not how I want my web to be. The granularity of a Flash applet is much too coarse.
Who donate their time for no other reason than that they wan to enrich everyone.
And over there are Abode, who bill their time for no other reason than that they want to enrich themselves.
How dare they compare themselves with FOSS developers? How dare they?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
In the Wikipedia article on Pot calling the kettle black there's this alternative interpretation: "the pot is sooty (being placed on a fire), while the kettle is clean and shiny (being placed on coals only), and hence when the pot accuses the kettle of being black, it is the pots own sooty reflection that it sees"
This is how I see Adobe's accusation against Firefox. I have yet to see *one* single site that requires Firefox, I have lost count of the sites that require Flash.
His reasons are fine, but they've been "trying" for too long they need more doing!
If he's serious about content being accessible on any platform then they need to start treating all platforms equally and with decent performance too.
it's ridiculous that a stupid flash game takes as much resources as a full on game. using the same technology for advert banners is insane
Apple prohibits any kind of code interpreter, not just Adobe's.
Dilbert RSS feed
read the title of the story as: "Adobe Flounders On Flash and Internet Standards"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnash
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/
Gnash is a GNU Flash movie player. Flash is an animation file format pioneered by Macromedia which continues to be supported by their successor company, Adobe. Flash has been extended to include audio and video content, and programs written in ActionScript, an ECMAScript-compatible language. Gnash is based on GameSWF, and supports most SWF v7 features and some SWF v8 and v9.
What was it again?
Oh right
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Where is javascript running on ARM?
"The Following Plug-In has crashed: Shockwave Flash"
However when you take Apple out of the picture (despite this being filed under Apple for some reason) no-one can think of a kind word for the Adobe wonder child. Oh how flash isn't open, only works on Adobe approved systems, Firefox runs on more systems etc etc....you can't have it both ways people.
I'm no fanboy but at least I'm not a hypocrite...Flash sucks, always has, always will....regardless of who choses to support it and who doesn't. FFS people, one would think you'd be happy that a company (in this case Apple) is trying to champion an open standard (HTML5) to free you from the shackles of requiring a compiled binary made especially for your system.
Whether you like Flash or not, the fact remains that for a long time it was the only way to do all sorts of things that are only just becoming viable with other methods, as so was the de-facto standard.
Things like Joe Cartoon, RatherGood.com and Fly Guy would never have existed without Flash, and there is all sorts of information stored in SWF files going back to the 90s. You may argue that this information is now in the wrong format, but there's lots of things that will never be updated to HTML5 or JavaScript equivalents.
I can understand a lot of the complaints about Flash, but if goes, we lose a large chunk of internet history with it. The battles between Adobe and Apple is all about their own self interest, but may result in people losing lots information for idealogical reasons (as has already happened to iPad and iPhone users).
This seems a little bit too much like book burning to me.
Microsoft is terrified by anything that would let it's locked-in customer base easily migrate to another desktop OS. Apple doesn't care so much.
Are you kidding? Both are as bad as each other, MS is being forced to allow people to choose things like browsers, Apple on the other hand are happily locking your into their tightly controlled products.
I like Flash, it provides a higher level of interactivity than what can be done with just HTML. All the cool stuff on the Internet uses Flash.
On the automakers websites I can select different trims and colors and see a mock up on the actual car, with Flash I an view a 360 degree panoramas of the inside of rooms on real estate for sale without having to run Quicktime.
The kids love Club Penguin and Nick.com, all of which use Flash extensively. On my iPad it is a little frustrating that it just doesn't work....yet it works fine with Flash on my 3 year old MBP.
Or maybe flash won't even be used for that anymore. Any OpenGL-esque extension which has a nicer production chain (3d studio max / blender / programming environment etc directly to browser) might make flash considerably less popular.
Many interest groups DO want that to happen. Lets see if it does.
Just a quick natter: JavaScript doesn't "just work" 100%.
ECMAScript is the name of the standard; Netscape (and later Mozilla) were entitled to use the Java trademark to call it JavaScript; Microsoft instead call it JScript. JScript somewhat resembles JavaScript, which is an implementation of ECMAScript; however, it is not much more compatible than anything else in the IE core.
Speaking of Java; it's funny, but as far as web-apps go, only a few years ago I'd have said that Java was officially dead and that Flash had gone and eaten its lunch. But now, it looks that, for web-apps, Flash is living on borrowed time and Java is on the brink of rebirth. Maybe once the non-IE browsers can finally, collectively dethrone IE and banish it to the far corners of the web, Java can finally do what neither Flash nor even itself managed to do: a true run-anywhere engine for compiled code inside every user agent.
The headline has a nice double-meaning. It could be read as an interview with the founders of Adobe on Flash and Internet standards, or that Adobe is foundering on Flash and Internet standards. The latter is what I first read it as.
javascript doesnt care - you're correct - but somebody still needs to code in the interpreter for that javascript. If i put javascript onto a device that doesn't understand javascript i'm screwed - just like running an SWF on something that doesn't have flash player. There's no such thing as true platform independance - SOMEBODY needs to write the interpreter for whatever language you're going to use, either at OS-level or above.
anything truly platform independant will run on Lynx, a wap phone and a set-top-box's crappy inbuilt browser .... enjoy your text-only web
Personally, as a development platform, with Android 2.2 around the corner, and Adobe releasing the iPhone packager for other mobile OS, I'm willing to give them breathing space to get on with what they are trying to achieve.
The problem I find with /. is so many people seem to be doing the "well v6 was crap, v10.1 must be awful" routine. It's tedious. Please go and read this http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2010/05/engineering_flash_player.html .
Currently there is no other company out there trying to deliver such a comprehensive write once, run anywhere solution. If they pull this off, my life as a developer becomes a lot simpler.
Founders... oh wait... it's a noun!
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
Firefox is free in both senses of the word. If you wish to develop something for firefox, you are free to do so, if you need firefox to view a webpage, then firefox is a free, hasslefree, clean install that has little chance of causing problems and runs at a decent speed. No, it's not the be-all and end-all of web-browsers, but it's one of the most standards compliant, free, and hasslefree. If you absolutely need something on the web, then it's the browser of choice to need.
You want to know what I see more of?, IE only webpages, and they still work better in firefox with IE Tab. You know what firefox also can't do?, kill your computer. For some strange, idiotic and illegal anticompetitive reason MS decided to put IE in the kernel, which means if it has problems it can affect the entire fucking computer. You know what Firefox does?, crashes, quickly, and then when you start it up it asks if you want to reload your webpages. You know IE does?, it f's over your entire computer.
You want to know what's worse? Adobe-only content:
Flash gives us four things, flash games, flash movies, flash intros and webpages, and an easily replaced video codec. No one is making good flash movies anymore, (except for some people making commercial TV series, and then they export it to a more traditional video format). I'd miss flash games, but they are quite, quite problematic. The world would be so much better off without those idiotic flash intros and flash websites, and as I just said, the video codec is easily replaced.
Acrobat takes longer to boot then WoW, and it only displays a document piecemeal. I can't even use acrobat plug-ins because of the extra strain it caues. I cringe whenever someone gives me something in PDF format. It, after many years, added the ability to add a bit of text to the forms, but it doesn't run any faster then it did years ago.
Adobe has dominating the marketplace for years without ever improving. You know what we need, we need something to come and replace everything it has ever done. It might have had a time, but that time is passed, and if they want to keep their audience, then how about making something good for a change, rather then suing people who point out the obvious flaws with your programmes.
These guys just don't understand Apple's business goals. Apple long ago realized that they can't compete as "just another computer company". The paper-thin margins of the PC business preclude that. So to that end, Apple's goal is to reinvent why people want to buy its products. Sure there were tons of MP3 players out there when the iPod came out but iTunes changed the way you get your music. Then the iPhone threw out the gimped phone device business model crammed down our throats by the phone companies. Apple wants to do the same thing with the iPad but with a broader goal. Embracing Flash is counter to that because then the consumer has less motivation to buy an Apple product. At its core, this is about business, not about technological ideology.
Even if they do eventually catch up to the Adobe player, they still have the exact same issue as HTML5 currently does: H.264 and other proprietary codecs.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I don't know why but for some strange reason every time someone talks about Flash the Queen Song Flash jumps into my head.
Flash - ah - saviour of the universe Flash - ah - it'll save ev'ry one of us Flash - ah - it's a miracle Flash - ah - king of the impossible It's for ev'ry one of us Stands for ev'ry one of us It'll save with a mighty hand Ev'ry man ev'ry woman ev'ry child With a mighty flash Flash - ah Flash - ah - it'll save ev'ry one of usMy ism, it's full of beliefs.
Adobe stands to loose the only tube-based revenue stream they have, and it's a big one. They are on the verge of becoming irrelevant via html5. I'm glad. They've had so many security holes over the past few years I hated installing Flash or Reader on anything. There were times it took Adobe months to release critical security fixes and the only reason they didn't do it sooner was because they were too fat and lazy. Everything Adobe is doing now is just a result of slowly running out of oxygen.
The only thing that can save Adobe now, and their grip on the browser/video/porn market, is to Open Source their product. The same way M$ killed Netscape; give it away, or get 0wned.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Use firefox and use the flashblock addon.
Has he forgotten about SVG ? Adobe still distributes a viewer for SVG, and there's native support in Firefox.
I think they're basically saying "We don't want open standards - we want only our standard".
Oh, how convenient: a theory about God that doesn't involve looking through a telescope.
There's enough open for you to write flash authoring tools, but not enough to write an actual client. In particular, last I checked, the "open" parts forbid you from writing a client.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It's always fascinating to see how long it takes for certain pieces of historical antiquity to die away.
Yeah, like having to install a plugin to see content! Fuck that shit!
Oh wait, that's Flash...
Last I checked, it could only be used for authoring tools, not for writing an actual client/plugin.
it can still deliver applications or 3D gaming experiences or whatever
Only very recently did it get actual hardware-accelerated 3D. I'm pretty sure Java doesn't, but JavaScript is getting 3D support soon (they're in the nightlies of the major open source browsers).
the 30 year old Pacman clone on Google's homepage stutters like a bitch.
Didn't stutter for me. What crappy browser are you running?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If flash was open source, a published standard and available for every single OS and platform then yes, they could claim it was fully cross platform.
The version of Flash lagged way behind on Linux for years.
Standards implementations are slowly converging over time and the focus now is on proper application development which flash has just never done a very good job of proving itself in. The needs of Adobe's customers changed, and their product just didn't change fast enough to keep up.
I'm assuming you will be screaming for an addon that disables all canvas elements on the page, y'know to kill all those adverts....
There are performance demo's around demonstrating Flash 10.1 vs HTML5 canvas implementations with Flash around 30fps and canvas around 6fps (SVG around 2fps).
HTML5 has got a lot of work to make it a viable alternative, but I suppose they actually need to finish defining what HTML5 actually is first.
Well, it's not run anywhere. FreeBSD/amd64 here, without a native flash plugin, and no Adobe support in sight. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of other platforms that too are not supported, and never will. (Sorry mods, I know it's redundant, but the point has to be driven home to Flash devs).
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
...in the red corner we have Flash...
98% of Internet connected PCs have Flash Player
85% of the top 100 websites use Flash Player (Alexa)
75% of web video is viewed using Flash Player (Comscore)
98% of enterprises rely on Flash Player (Forrester)
70% of web games are delivered using Flash Player (Evans Data Corp.)
3.5 million developers use the Flash Platform
19 of the top 20 device manufacturers worldwide have committed to shipping Flash technology on their devices
And in the blue corner we have Html5 SPIDERMAN
http://www.optimum7.com/css3-man/animation.html
Now tell me again that the html5 advocates don't have a sense of humour =)
Another reason Apple is so dead-set against using Adobe Flash on their iPhone/iPads is because they would lose their exclusive development platform of XCode on their custom Mac hardware. And if Apple is anything, they are a hardware company.
Basically what they are saying (after they changed their licensing agreement for iPhone/iPad developers) is that if you want to write software for us you will type in code in XCode and compile it using that compiler and submit it to us for approval.
If they allowed native compiled code from other software developers, then anybody with Adobe's latest CS5 Flash (even on Windows!) could create native iPhone binaries using the well-known Flash dev environment. And porting Flash games over would take work, but not nearly as much as buying a Mac and re-writing everything in Objective-C.
And all those annoying Flash banner ads! I'm glad they're gone... I mean being replaced by Apple iAd so they can control the entire advertising "experience" for your online devices. iAds is coming soon to iPhone OS 4.
Adobe can make all the excuses for flash they want, but it still sucks hind tit for all the reasons people have complained about before. However, I do think they have a valid point regarding their thoughts about "internet standards" and how it was supposed to be versus how it is now a days. It was not intended there be patent encumbered which defeats the whole purpose and idea behind the ubiquity of accessing data. Yet there are companies with the sole intent of making everyone pay a toll or beholding to them. That in my view is wrong and is no better than the wall AOL tried to erect around the Internet.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
The only way to ensure cross-platform capabilities is open standards (unencumbered by patents). If we have learned anything from the age of the Internet, it's that building on an open standard, even if inferior in many ways, allows for an amazing array of applications that could never be imagined. Anyone can impliment a HTML browser for any piece of hardware (to a point). Flash's cross-platform capabilities are entirely dependent on one company. One public company who at anytime could choose to not port their "Internet viewer" to your platform (or just drag the chain, or do a poor job). Who in their right mind would want to be beholden to that? Adobe holds the Internet to ransom! Yes we need flash like capabilites, but we need them an an open format that anyone can impliment. I am not beholden to firefox, if I wanted to get off my arse, I could contribute to add whatever feature I so desired. If I had enough capital I could make a browser from scratch. No, flash is the antithesis of the open web, it must die, and the only way achieve this is to replace it with an open standard that can do as much (or close).
If browers implemented standards and HTML/CSS/JavaScript were not "languages" circa 1980 the world would be a better place. As it stands, most Internet development resembles old mainframes. Flash/Flex brings back at least some semblance of client-server development. But hey, as long as my mom can write a web page...
Another reason Apple is so dead-set against using Adobe Flash on their iPhone/iPads is because they would lose their exclusive development platform of XCode on their custom Mac hardware. And if Apple is anything, they are a hardware company.
I'm trying hard to understand what you're trying to say here. Apple makes piles of money selling iPhones. They make next to nothing selling Macs to iPhone developers. There simply aren't very many app developers compared to iPhone users. You'd have to be dim to make architectural decisions about the iPhone with that tiny amount of profit as a motivator instead of iPhone profit. I agree Apple wants to control the dev tools, but I think that's because they want to be able to sell more iPhones. They sell more iPhones by making the iPhone platform better for end users and part of that is adding new features other phones don't have and getting developers to use them. Third party dev tools are a tollbooth run by another company in this process.
Basically what they are saying (after they changed their licensing agreement for iPhone/iPad developers) is that if you want to write software for us you will type in code in XCode and compile it using that compiler and submit it to us for approval.
Yeah, pretty much... unless you want to write HTML5 apps, of course.
If they allowed native compiled code from other software developers, then anybody with Adobe's latest CS5 Flash (even on Windows!) could create native iPhone binaries using the well-known Flash dev environment.
Yup, that was Adobe's plan. Apple doesn't want that to happen. Think of it from Apple's perspective. You dump a few million into doing something cool for the iPhone, say just in time compiler improvements and a battery saving architecture. Suddenly apps use 20% less battery and the iPhone effectively has a 20% longer battery life than competitors with the same hardware. Score! But wait, while this is built into the iPhone and Apple's developer tools, requiring just a recompile for app developers to make it happen for their app, what about third party tools? Suddenly you've got thousands of apps made with Adobe's tools and those don't get the improvements until Adobe gets around to implementing them in their Flash suite, if they ever do. Apple already has this problem on OS X, with many major cross platform apps completely failing to support the cool features offered by the OS. So now, despite spending millions on R&D to differentiate their platform from other phones and make something better, Apple is waiting on Adobe to get around to doing work before their investment pays off. And meanwhile other companies are copying Apple's improvements. Will Adobe even get around to implementing it until it is on pretty much every platform and is no longer a differentiator to drive sales? Will they ever get around to it? They sure don't have a great track record so far, with Flash apps performing abysmally on OS X and Linux. So what is Apple to do? Clearly, they ban third party dev tools that can be blockers.
And porting Flash games over would take work, but not nearly as much as buying a Mac and re-writing everything in Objective-C.
This is true and is a detriment to Apple and their platform, but they seem to think it is worth it to deal with the problem above. The market will decide in a few years if they were right.
And all those annoying Flash banner ads! I'm glad they're gone... I mean being replaced by Apple iAd so they can control the entire advertising "experience" for your online devices.
Umm, I don't think Flash ads and Apple's iAd program are really comparable. It's more like an adwords competitor aimed at the mobile market.
That's no matter how fast is CPU and how many cores inside. And no comprehensive explanation from Adobe. Many of sites just talk about ignorance of this. Isn't there no fix ? Old versions runs fast, but have security holes. Is there any "CPU hog limiter" implementation impossible ?
HTML works well enough for most things
HTML is 15 year old (or whatever, I'm not looking it up:) technology. For the past ten years, I've been embarrassed telling people the their newly upgraded, web based application hasn't got the same flexibility and rich ui functionality that their 'outdated' desktop application has. No context menus, 'paging' tables of data, the whole screen flashes blank every time they do anything (yes I know ajax can do things in the background but ajax is a different rant). As soon as Flex came out, I jumped on it. And now I'm using silverlight. Both are fantastic for LOB apps compared to HTML which is fine for newspaper and non (or limited) interactive content but not for a fully fleshed out UX.
I'm not saying proprietary is a better way to go but current standards don't cut it. Design by committee doesn't work.
In defense of Microsoft (wow) at least Silverlight works well on something other than Windows. Adobe can not say the same thing.
And Flash is available for every web browser? I don't hear the outcry about the lack of Flash on the Wii (or broken Flash). Certainly the Wii has sold more units than the iPhone has. All I know for certain is my kids want to access a Flash based web site, www.webkinz.com, which does not load on the Wii.
Flash is not open until every browser can support it without the browser maker paying licensing fees or waiting for some third-party to develop a plugin for their browser.
HTML is open and no one pays licensing fees or so I was led to believe.
He said that in the next sentence :)
After reading several of these posts, a trend develops quickly: Everyone should use what I like to use!! Bullcrap! For whatever animosity or dislike you have for either the Microsoft or Unix worlrd, they brought things together so that all of you can read and comment on articles like this. Apple pouts and doesn't want to play ball anymore. Fine with me, they account for such a small amount of the market, they are a non-player except for those who think Steve Jobs walks on water. He made his choices. Picked his markets. And that is where Apple still is and always will be. Jobs wants the world to revolve around him but only in the way he wants it to revolve. Fine, his choice. Mine, and many others, is a more open environment. We all went throught the early problems with incompatable hardware, incompatable software (is it an IBM? Compaq? Apple? Atari? Commodore? etc?) so the current environment is quite desireable. Except for those of you who want to return to the environment of "Which browser are you running?" with all of their unique hooks. So which one guys?? IE has most of the market, like or not. Apple is a blip, like it or not. Then you have Firefox, Apache and countless others with their avid supporters. Flash...yes, it should be supported and supported across *ALL* browsers. If not, then that browser does not get used and dies off of the major market. As it should with any product that decides not to pbe art of the solution instead of part of the problem. My recommendation to Apple - support Flash and the many other plugins and tools and stop whinning. Jobs, you would look silly sucking on a pacifier.
Adobes license agreement requires fees for distributing a flash player on devices or to install a flash player without an unmodified Adobe installer. They promised to drop the fees in 2008 but have not found the time to modify the license agreement. They are too busy making statements about how great they art...
It's definitely true that a single company controlling a complex API / standard should always be able to provide a more consistent implementation than a dozen companies trying to implement a complex API / standard independently. The question is whether we want any single company effectively in control of the Web; I think the answer's obvious.
And if your answer is that Adobe should open-source Flash so that Apple, Microsoft, et al can create their own implementations -- and by necessity, their own non-standard optimizations and improvements -- we'll be right back where we are now, with a lot of small inconsistencies that prevent content from playing correctly on all platforms
Not sure why this was modded flame post. Adobe said the same thing to all of us in their post. Someone fix this poor guys rating. The story says fuck you people of the internet, use flash or die. (I know I paraphrased). This nice fellow responds "Fuck You!", kind of a right-back-at-you not flamebait...
This is not because HTML is not a standard i'ts that some browser makers don't care to support it because (their marketing prople think) they can get more economical benefit from nor doing it, just like this guys pontificate about the stuff they create as being the most wonderfulest when it's so blatantly obvious they're primarily motivated by the profitability not the quality or the accessibility, for them standards are good as long as they're the ones ho make it. They could as well be working at apple and give the exact same answers, just replace one trademark for another.
"Adobe Founders On Flash and Internet Standards"
That makes it sound like Adobe is foundering on Flash and Internet Standards.
It would be like a headline:
"Apple founders on iPhone Design"
People would think Apple was fumbling around with the iPhone Design.
The headline is bad, even alarmist. Is there a new Apple Intern doing some of the editing on the site? I do notice that this is apple.slashdot.org, not the real site.
I'm not saying proprietary is a better way to go but current standards don't cut it. Design by committee doesn't work.
Isn't that kind of like saying bars not owned by the mob suck because they always have shattered windows, light on fire regularly, and the bartenders all have broken fingers? Design by committee can work well, unless all progress is halted for a decade by a single monopolist who illegally leverages their position to prevent cross-platform Web apps from being viable. Web standards and progress stalled because MS outright refused to implement any of them in IE and IE has an artificially inflated market share from being bundled with a desktop OS that has monopoly influence on the market. Several different Web standards were put forward and a reference implementation created over the years but they all died because developers couldn't use them because 60%+ of users were on IE and MS refused to play ball.
The reason Flash apps haven't taken off is the lack of right-click, which makes the entire UI into a toy.
MS have done nothing to prevent Flash apps taking off. Compared to their story on Java they are very friendly to Flash.
What Adobe are basically saying, is that a single proprietary monoculture (flash) is better than multiple slightly incompatible implementations (browsers)...
I have lots of devices here which can access HTML, but considerably less which support flash... There are open source implementations of HTML but pretty much only one closed source implementation of flash, so i can use html on niche systems like haiku, netbsd, amigaos etc while i can't use flash because adobe doesn't bother to support such niche platforms. A few years ago i used an sgi and an alphastation as my primary workstations, neither of which had flash support.
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So you're one of those fuckers that makes IE only apps... You're not a programmer, you're not a web designer. Just go do something else with your life as you're a failure at doing web.
I bow to your orating skills, sir. Sometimes it is far more valuable to be able to express ones opinions in a clear manner, than actually being right about everything. And I don't mean that you are wrong, but posts like this one make Slashdot a good place to be.
iPhone and all android phones for a start...
Binary vs plain-text has nothing to do with this. What is important is that there is a plain-text program (i.e. source code) that can make sense of the "binary".
If we would follow your model, we would also need ten times storage space for everything. That is not always feasable. Computers think in binary, no need to force them to read human text because you do. If you disagree, read the first paragraph again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)
The point is that since the ECMA specification is open and standardized, the work of producing interpreter code is very straightforward and in fact already available in a relatively-platform-independent programming language - C - as f.e. SpiderMonkey project by Mozilla. This all as opposed to having to wade through vague SWF "specification" by Adobe AND to account for the quirks of the Flash Player (which is the de-facto SWF player) while doing that.
Shorter put, as evidence and observation would have it, making GNASH has proven to be far more difficult than making Spidermonkey. That alone says it all, pretty much.
Every unmodified Adobe installer that I have used has essentially been invisible to the user. So where's the beef?
Except I think the site is near death.
Just because a series has gone on hiatus or even reached its finale doesn't mean that the format in which the series is encoded (SWF vector animation) is no longer useful. People new to the series can watch the complete series, and people can watch other series that use the same format.
6 months paternity leave is excessive.
How long does a TV show take between one season and the next? How long did Doctor Who go on hiatus?
Where is Flash for BSD? For AMD64?
Just about everything in Flash except for the legacy H.263 video codec is documented, and Adobe dropped the restriction against writing your own SWF player two years ago as part of the Open Screen Project. Have you donated to the Gnash project yet?
In particular, last I checked, the "open" parts forbid you from writing a client.
You last checked more than two years ago. Please see a press release in which Adobe drops the restriction on players.
Anything which runs too slow on a computer this year will be butter by next year.
Do you sincerely believe that Crysis will run well on mobile phones or pocket-size Internet tablets (e.g. Archos) next year?
If Flash and Java ran in the browser on an iPhone, then you could actually develop high-powered webapps, and run a web-based app store.
What does JavaScript lack compared to Flash's ActionScript in this respect?
I won't get along with flash until it stops making my CPU and Graphics card double in temperature. I've been using the HTML5 beta of since shortly after it launched and without flash, my computer doesn't get nearly as hot...
Just recently, my mom got a virus from Firefox. I thought, "That's odd, Firefox is pretty good about that". It turns out she was using Firefox 2.0. I was about to tell her to download the latest Firefox, but then I realized... a year from now, it's not going to get updated AGAIN. So... I told her to download Chrome.
I think the problem with the advancement of standards isn't how long it takes to develop standards, or developers adopting standards. The problem is that 30% of the users are using a browser that wont update it's self, and if it isn't for some sort of intervention, they wont. Ever. Thankfully, thanks to OS upgrades, people buying new computers, and tech savvy relatives around the world, a new generation of browser finally becomes the new standard after 5 years. This is a ridiculous amount of time to wait before you can even start suggesting to your clients to use new technology. How does all this waiting to use new technology put any pressure on the standardization process to add new features?
The first thing that I think should be standard in all browsers... is background updating forever. Even after a whole new browser version is released. If your afraid to scare away users then keep the interface the same, but update those damn javascript and rendering engines. If the user really wants a "new" experience, they'll download the "new" browser with the new interface. There are too many advantages to background updating browsers to pass it up.
With technology as cool as HTML5 coming out, it is a shame to hear around my office, "Eh, HTML5... we MIGHT see it used in 5 years". Non-updated browsers hurts the internet industry. And it shouldn't take the next "big thing" on the internet to start pushing forward a few new technologies. In a world where all browsers update in the background, everyone should be working hard to update their site just to remain competitive. Because in 2 weeks after the release of the new standard, 80% of the internet will using it.
Adobe says about Apple and Microsoft that, "...they would like you to buy into their implementation of how the seamless integration with the Web goes. What we're saying is it really shouldn't matter. That cloud ought to be accessible by anybody's computer and through any sort of information sitting out on the Web."
The problem with Adobe here is that they're invading the standardized Web and calling themselves the "Web". Basically, technology lag caused by slow adoption rates of standards is causing the "plugin" market to grow too large, and Flash is a result of that. The idea to counteract this is to develop a standards based ecosystem that fills the market demand for new technologies, so that the market doesn't depend on plug-ins for growth. The only way I see for us to decrease the technology lag is to increase adoption rates of standards, and apply pressure to the standardization process to explore new technologies. I think background updates would be one good way to get things moving in this direction.
Free means 0$/mo, and that's most probably not what you are paying.
On AT&T, I pay $60/mo if I bring my own smartphone. I also pay $60/mo if I get the subsidized smartphone. The difference between the two is $0/mo unless I switch to T-Mobile once my contract is up.
is moving the dependency to something you can control.
Who do you think you are kidding?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"That cloud ought to be accessible by anybody's computer and through any sort of information sitting out on the Web, as long as it has an Adobe logo on it."
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
So you're one of those fuckers that makes IE only apps... You're not a programmer, you're not a web designer. Just go do something else with your life as you're a failure at doing web.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight#Operating_systems_and_web_browsers
Anyone with a Mac knows that Flash on the Mac has always, and seemingly will always, suck balls. Currently it works a lot better on my Mac mini then it did on my pre-intel systems, but it's relative. On my MacBook it sends the fans wild, and on that Mac mini the arrow keys don't work in many Flash-based games. For example my kids can't play many of the mini-games on Club Penguin because the damn arrow keys don't work. Update after update doesn't fix this. I actually now have them run Firefox in Windows in VMWare Fusion, where the arrow keys work, but that's just ridiculous. Given all that, why are people surprised that Apple is hesitant to even allow Flash on the iPhone? Adobe doesn't care, and putting trust in them has not worked out even remotely in the past for Apple.
--- What?
Standards are (or should be) created by a consortium... The last time I checked W3C there wasn't much mention of the Flash standard... Though far from a standard yet, it appears that both W3C and WHATWG are indicating that VP8 / WebM have some potential to become part of the HTML5 standard (http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20005466-264.html).
"That cloud ought to be accessible by anybody's computer and through any sort of information sitting out on the Web." Interesting that they would mention Flash's Achilles heel in that its history has been littered with weak or broken accessibility. On the Mac platform, which includes a full screen reader and keyboard navigation system built into the OS, Flash is entirely inaccessible. On Windows, if you embed flash so that it works with DHTML layers (set wmode) it also becomes inaccessible. Even if it is embedded in a page running on a Windows browser, most developers don't know about or discover how to set up attributes to, say, label a button or control as to what it does. Those options are buried in the IDE UI and turned off by default (or at least they used to be). Even if a developer cares, at some point that custom slider constructed from boxes with mouse tracking and such needs semantic markup to identify what it is - the ActionScript equivalent of the w3c's ARIA. Adobe says they are working on it but when? Sure HTML5/CSS3 is pretty green, but there are real implementations out there now in mainstream browsers. By the time Flash catches up, will it matter?
{sigh} Okay. Once more with feeling.
Adobe wants Flash to be used by everyone because the want:
A) Sincerely to create a universal platform for all coders to use
B) Money
Apple hates Flash and wants HTML5 to be adopted because the want:
A) A truly open and universal platform for all coders to use
B) More money
Microsoft hates Flash because they want:
A) More money
B) More money than God
Coders want Flash or don't want flash because they would really like
A) Not to have to invest more money in learning a new language
B) To be paid gazillions of dollars for knowing some language that costs thousands of dollars to license
C) To be paid gazillions of dollars for knowing some language that is truly thorny and requires six or seven support languages just to make it onto a computer.
D) All of the above and MORE MONEY.
Take your time.
Wish I could tell these 2 what I think of their company's purchase of Omniture (2o7.net) but I want to keep it office safe.
It is so frustrating that this many years later we're still in an environment where someone says if you really want this to work you have to use Flash.
Except if its running on an ARM chip its running a hell of a lot slower...
If flash had open sourced flash from the beginning, it would likely have been integrated into webkit/mozilla at least by now, and might even form part of html5.
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MobileSafari (iPhone)
Mobile Chrome (Android)
The Nokia Maemo browser
Windows Mobile IE
Opera Mobile
Any open source javascript interpreter when compiled for an ARM processor
And a lot more...
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I guess it was the same person who modded you as a Troll. :/
:)
But fear not, my Karma is too high.
P.S: Fuck you Adobe!
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Nothing is stopping you from porting an existing javascript engine to a new device, or writing one from scratch for that device..
Adobe's licensing of the flash spec prohibits doing this..
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I love his ridiculous idea of "cross-platform". So, let's see: It runs on old 32-bit Windows browsers, Intel and PowerPC Macs and 32-bit Linux. And there's a pre-release for 64-bit Linux, and maybe an Android version coming. That's it. Whooptdee doo. How far we have sunk when "cross-platform" means "works on more than one platform"!
Whilst it's primarily aimed at producing application-style code it's more than capable of graphical/game content too, you just need to bring the graphics in from another application.
Say I wanted to make something like Homestar Runner or Badger Badger Badger. In which application should I make the animated vector graphics before bringing them into Flex SDK?
I have yet to see *one* single site that requires Firefox
HTML5 elements such as <video> and <canvas> do not work in Internet Explorer. They work in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, or the Google Chrome Frame plug-in for IE. Among these, Firefox has the most users. Look at how many of these demos of HTML5 elements and APIs don't work in IE 8.
Oh, and you could always just ignore software patents
That would require moving myself and all my users out of USA, Germany, and South Korea. Is your country ready to take in potentially millions of refugees from information processing patent regimes?
or use a format other than H.264.
Which format? MPEG-LA claims that WebM infringes.
Yes, but the "Microsoft is terrified... Apple doesn't care so much." kinda ruined his point and turned it into a Microsoft are evil, Apple are good post. Apple get a lot of good publicity, and people love to hate Microsoft, but I fail to see how they are anything but two sides of the same coin. Other than that it's an interesting post.
It is so frustrating that this many years later we're still in an environment where someone says if you really want this to work you have to use Firefox.
Wait what? Forced to use Firefox? uhhhhh ... right
With the exception of the old-style vector-animated .swf stuff
And it is this "old-style vector-animated .swf stuff" that will keep Flash Player installed on people's PCs. Ever heard of All Your Base, or Hatt-baby, or Hyakugojyuuichi, or Badgers, or Weebl and Bob, or Homestar Runner? All vector-animated. Newgrounds? Entirely vector-animated until Numa Numa Dance proved the concept of FLV, and the vast majority is still vector-animated thanks to YouTube siphoning off the authors who would have used H.26x or VPx. For example, Hatt-baby is 1 MB, and it'd probably be ten times bigger if rendered and encoded in H.264.
iShiver
Adobe Founders On Flash and Internet Standards
While it may not have been intentional, this is a great title. True for all common definitions of "founder":
What platform independence is all about, is that the platform is completely irrelevant. You know, like the web is supposed to be. Javascript doesn't care if it's running on an Intel chip or an ARM chip, it doesn't care if you're running it in Windows or Linux, it doesn't care which browser you are using. THAT is platform independence. Loading the approriate binary for your platform is not, especially if you can't create these binaries yourself in the case Adobe doesn't support your platform.
No language/dev tool is inherently platform independent. Though some are more widely available than others, every single one requires that a vendor (company or developer or other) must decide to provide it on a given platform. Every VM and interpreted system needs to have someone write that VM/interpreter for a platform.
Platform independence isn't about the number of supported platforms - it's about the experience of use across platforms that *are* supported. If a flash game or video runs identically on Mac, Linux, and Windows -- it's still platform independent. Even if it doesn't run on AIX and my Blackberry.
Of course, I otherwise agree - Flash is terrible for the web. Or at least my eyes. And "platform independence" is obviously not synonymous with "open standard".
"I'm honestly not sure, at this point, if they are just self-serving whiners or if they have been wrapped up in adobe so long that they've acquired a capacity for sincere delusion..."
Message from the CEO of Adobe:
"I make $40 million per year for playing golf, having long lunches, and flying in the company plane. I certainly don't care about the quirks of Flash, or the bugs, or the proprietary user interface, or the loss of privacy caused by Flash storing files about sites you have visited. As long as customers keep paying huge prices for new versions of Adobe Suite every few months, even though there are few changes, I will continue with stockholder's approval. CS 15 anyone?"
I see no mention of "player" which suggests I'm allowed to write a third-party player. The specs have been available for at least that long...
All it mentions is "removing restrictions", which is pretty vague.
From Open Screen Project FAQ > "What motivated Adobe to remove the licensing restrictions from the specifications?": "Until now, the specification had a license agreement associated with it, which said that developers could write software to output SWF but could not make software that would "play" SWF files. [...] Adobe is removing this restriction from the SWF specification [...] This will permit the development of applications that play SWF files."
This is rich.. "The whole point of the universality of the Web would be to not have those kind of distinctions, but we're still living with them."... What do you think they teach people in B-school? To make your products indistinguishable from those your competition? what a joke. Truly a capitalist geek whine-fest. The history of software is littered with ego-tripping coders who cry, "if everybody would just use MY standard, we'd all have a simpler more beautiful technology". It's why the web is a tower of babel of so-called "standards".
So, this guy in one paragraph basically said "we think the web should be standard, and integrated into browsers" and "flash should be used for the web". He basically just argued against flash while trying to support it. Amazing. But then again, these are the same people that created Postscript, and charged an arm and a leg for it... so standards are great, as long as they get royalties, yes?
Sorry, Java and Javascript have exactly the same issue. They need the "appropriate binary" between the platform and the independent part. Just like BASIC in the 1960s, or any other 3GL (FORTRAN, Cobol, etc.).
Even the abstract web can't be independent. If your platform has a browser that works just fine, and people start using new features like style sheets and your browser doesn't handle it, then "the web" isn't platform-independent any more. The browser itself has replaced the BASIC interpreter as a translation layer, even before it loads the Java interpreter.
The abstract ideal needs real implementation to work in the real world.
No, they don't want the iPhone turning into this vast wasteland of crap turned out by graphic designers instead of programmers which is what was starting to happen to the web with regard to flash. And Flash IS CRAP, it's a resource hog that doesn't extend what you can already do if you bothered to use more efficient native calls.
BTW, Apple does not control how Apple iAds are displayed, it's just a framework to help new developers inject Ads to fund their work and in the same vein allows Apple to capitalize on in-app advertising, they just happened to demonstrate how Apples iAd framework will provide a much more interactive experience using an actual web standard (HTML5). You will not see an iAd unless the developer puts ads into their app.
"founders - collapses: breaks down, literally or metaphorically"
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
Ok, I only read a few of the hundreds of comments, but there is one good reason why I personally dislike Flash, (outside of it's proprietary nature) - and that is the Adobe memory management. Adobe are terrible with memory management. All of the software leaks like a sieve. No wonder they find it so hard to port.
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how did I miss this! Must install tonight! I have a network of machines to upgrade!
Unless its ours..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Another reason Apple is so dead-set against using Adobe Flash on their iPhone/iPads is because they would lose their exclusive development platform of XCode on their custom Mac hardware. And if Apple is anything, they are a hardware company.
I'm trying hard to understand what you're trying to say here. Apple makes piles of money selling iPhones. They make next to nothing selling Macs to iPhone developers.
Apple wants to control the development platform because it locks developers into supporting only Apple's end user hardware, namely, the iPhone. Apple's tools do not effectively support cross platform development, so anyone who wants to make an app that runs on more than just the iPhone has to write substantial amounts of additional code to support the non-Apple devices. The result is many developers opting not to target devices other than the iPhone at all, which is good for Apple because users are now pressured to buy their hardware for the exclusive applications.
If Apple allows Adobe's development tools to be used, the distinction between Apple and non-Apple hardware is abstracted away, and there is no longer any reason for developers not to make their applications available on as many devices as possible. This invites competition that Apple naturally does not want.
Javascript doesn't care if it's running on an Intel chip or an ARM chip, it doesn't care if you're running it in Windows or Linux, it doesn't care which browser you are using.
It doesn't care if javascript has been ported to your browser..
While i agree in principle with what you are saying and things should be pushed down the stack as far as possible, everything relies on something being ported to something.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Apple wants to control the development platform because it locks developers into supporting only Apple's end user hardware...
That's just your speculation and not supported by the facts. Why are they dumping so much money into free HTML5 dev tools and support for HTML5 apps in Webkit if their goal is to prevent cross platform apps? Also, why would taking steps that make cross platform development in and of itself help Apple instead of hurt them. Generally, breaking interoperability only helps when you have dominant market share, otherwise it hurts the bottom line. So basically, your hypothesis has no support.
Nice list there. It's good to see that everything not supported such as chrome, opera and friends are listed as N/A on non windows platforms.
Better to pretend they don't exist then actually have support for them...
(IANAL)
The Flash Player EULA used to include a clause that attempted to prevent users of the software from also developing a competing product. That particular clause was excised from the EULA several versions ago.
Here's the most relevant part of the EULA for 10.1 and what it says on the subject (you'll have to jump down to the English section starting on page 66):
4.5 No Modification or Reverse Engineering. You shall not modify, adapt, translate or create derivative
works based upon the Software. You shall not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise
attempt to discover the source code of the Software. If you are located in the European Union, please
refer to the additional terms at the end of this agreement under the header “European Union
Provisions,” in Section 16.
So you can't directly adapt or create a derivative work of the player, but as long as you write your own thing, you should be fine.
coding is life
That cloud ought to be accessible by anybody's computer and through any sort of information sitting out on the Web.
As long as the server has the right crossdomain.xml file...
Flash only works where Adobe choose to compile it.
And Gnash only works where you choose to compile it. Or were you referring to Flash IDE rather than Flash Player?
The reason you cant understand this is because you dont account for the fact that Apple wants to lock users and developers into their prductlines wholely and solely. If you want to develop for the Iphone, you have to use a Imac, end of story and they will be checking. If you want to use the internet on your Iphone you have to use Safari and it's implementation of web standards/frameworks, end of story and they will be checking.
More important then selling Iphones is making sure existing customers cant leave, making sure that developers cant leave or make cross platform applications deminishing the unique appeal of the Apple product line.
Many fanboys have pointed out that Apple cant compete with other vendors, so they need to lock in their entire supply chain and userbase.
There, fixed that for you. Such a glaring omission.
HTML5 is not yet a standard and Apple is tying to take control of it and force all users on all platforms into Apple's implementation of a standard. That means using Apple's chosen codec and how Apple chooses to interpret tags such as video and canvas.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Ironic then that my main motivation for continuing to use Firefox is that it has Flashblock.
That's just your speculation and not supported by the facts. Why are they dumping so much money into free HTML5 dev tools and support for HTML5 apps in Webkit if their goal is to prevent cross platform apps?
Apple's move to support HTML5 is commendable, but don't doubt for an instant that they also have an interest in breaking the back of Flash. Adobe has been less than stellar in supporting the Mac lately and Apple wants to be sure they aren't beholden to them in the future.
Also, why would taking steps that make cross platform development in and of itself help Apple instead of hurt them. Generally, breaking interoperability only helps when you have dominant market share, otherwise it hurts the bottom line. So basically, your hypothesis has no support.
Apple's mindshare with casual users is tremendous. The big fight right now is not among Apple, Android, RIM, Nokia et al, but rather between Apple and Android. The latter two have traditionally targeted the business and prosumer markets and have mature offerings there. Android and the iPhone OS are both new, emerging platforms targeting home users, and in that market Apple's position is enviable. They may recently have slipped behind Android on total sales, but they still have the next gen iPhone coming down the pipe and all reports indicate that it will close the hardware gap that emerged with the release of the Nexus One.
Your argument that Apple's exclusion of Flash is based exclusively on concern about application quality is a little naive, I think. If applications developed with Adobe's tools are lower in quality than the native offerings, consumers will recognize that and opt not to use them. Saying that they will instead turn around and blame Apple for their shortcomings is a little twisted. Additional choices are a win for consumers here, the only one who stands to lose is Apple. Denying that their actions here are not motivated at least in part by unadulterated self-interest is disingenuous.
The reason you cant understand this is because you dont account for the fact that Apple wants to lock users and developers into their prductlines[sic] wholely and solely.
You're right, I don't "account for that" or rather I don't just blindly accept it as true without any evidence. But then, you haven't presented any evidence as yet.
If you want to develop for the Iphone, you have to use a Imac, end of story and they will be checking.
Citation? I have a friend who develops on a MacBook (a Mac, not an iMac) and I know another guy who uses a Hackintosh. How are they checking and do you have any support for this assertion?
If you want to use the internet on your Iphone you have to use Safari and it's implementation of web standards/frameworks, end of story and they will be checking.
You know that the internet and the Web are different things, right? As for accessing the Web you can use the built in Webkit with any browser that wants to use it or you can use browsers like the one offered by Opera that perform server side rendering. Or you can jailbreak your device and use whatever you want. But I fail to see how this locks developers into developing only for iPhones. The Webkit engine is open source and in use by lots of major browsers including Chrome and being used to render all applications on WebOS. It is a very cross platform layer.
More important then selling Iphones is making sure existing customers cant leave...
So Apple doesn't want to make money? Selling iPhones gets Apple cash. What does locking in users get them? Small amounts of additional revenue from the services they run only slightly better than break even?
Many fanboys have pointed out that Apple cant[sic] compete with other vendors, so they need to lock in their entire supply chain and userbase.
Yeah, and many fanboys have pointed out that Microsoft is not a monopoly and that Barack Obama is muslim. What's your point? Many people make unsupportable assertions all the time. I don't believe everything asserted by random individuals.
Yeah, pretty much... unless you want to write HTML5 apps according to Apples implantation of course.
There, fixed that for you. Such a glaring omission.
What are you twelve or something?
HTML5 is not yet a standard and Apple is tying[sic] to take control of it and force all users on all platforms into Apple's implementation of a standard.
Apple was one of the founders of HTML5 but they're collaborating on making it. I've heard no complaints from Google and Opera and Mozilla about Apple's involvement or their trying to take over. The working group has had disagreements and made compromises with one another, but if you're going to assert Apple is trying to take over the standard, you need to support that with actual facts.
. That means using Apple's chosen codec and how Apple chooses to interpret tags such as video and canvas.
HTML5 does not specify a codec. That was a compromise made when Apple and Google wanted one codec and Mozilla wanted another. As for video and canvas tags, I follow the developments. I've seen complaints about Adobe and Microsoft (not group chairs) attempting to slow progress with those tags or make them less useful, specifically the Adobe procedural issues brought up by Hickson. Those issues were then resolved and everyone moved on. I've heard not a single complaint about Apple. So, where's your evidence that Apple is trying to take control of HTML5 and prevent it from being a useful cross platform application layer? I can provide citations about the huge amount of OSS code they've donated with regard to Webkit interpreting HTML5 and on free HTML5 application development tools if you want.
Apple's move to support HTML5 is commendable, but don't doubt for an instant that they also have an interest in breaking the back of Flash.
Of course they do. I already explained some good reasons why. Getting rid of Flash gets rid of a proprietary component and replaces it with an open standard one. It's good for Apple and good for end users. Where's the problem?
Apple's mindshare with casual users is tremendous.
That doesn't really matter in terms of application development. What matters is what application developers think, and while I'm sure some of them don't research markets before deciding what to target and how, I don't think that is the norm.
The big fight right now is not among Apple, Android, RIM, Nokia et al, but rather between Apple and Android. The latter two have traditionally targeted the business and prosumer markets and have mature offerings there.
Listen, I know geeks care a lot about cool and new technology and whatnot and focus less on older more established tech. That doesn't mean you can discount the largest players as not important to a market. Apple only has about 15% of the worldwide smartphone market. Making it harder for developers to target the iPhone and other phones at the same time is only going to hurt Apple unless there are other benefits in that same action.It would be like Microsoft making the Zune less compatible with iPod accessories, not going to help in and of itself.
Your argument that Apple's exclusion of Flash is based exclusively on concern about application quality is a little naive, I think.
But you haven't presented another motivation for Apple that makes any sense or has any supporting evidence.
If applications developed with Adobe's tools are lower in quality than the native offerings, consumers will recognize that and opt not to use them.
How will users do that? Are most users going to know which applications are eating up their battery life? Are users going to blame Adobe if their security is compromised and they get a virus? Even if they do, does that mean it won't lead to Apple losing a sale next time the user buys a phone? Are users going to recognize that it is Adobe's fault a large swath of applications don't have functions they've never heard of, or will they simply think iPhones and other phones have about the same level of functionality, not recognizing that functionality offered by Apple is being filtered out? Users can be counted on to act in their own best interests and while blame is great and all, it doesn't mean they will buy iPhones because it is Adobe's fault iPhones are no better than Android phones.
Additional choices are a win for consumers here, the only one who stands to lose is Apple. Denying that their actions here are not motivated at least in part by unadulterated self-interest is disingenuous.
No, what's twisted is saying Apple is breaking cross-platform compatibility to hurt other platforms when that doesn't even make logical sense. I've explained ways in which Apple's actions make sense and are benefitting Apple. You've just asserted that somehow breaking cross platform compatibility helps Apple and is in their best interests. Clearly Apple acts in its own best interests, but you have to present what those interests are and show how an action benefits them if you want me to take your hypothesis of Apple's motivation seriously. All you have so far is an assertion and a non sequitur.
The application developers would maybe like to use Flash (or maybe not) but are hindered by insane licensing fees.
There are no licensing fees for using Flash. There are completely free, some even open-source, tools available for producing Flash content.
Adobe really tried to get people to develop whole applications in Flash, but I could never see a compelling reason to do this. HTML works well enough for most things (even more with HTML5), anything more demanding is maybe not a good candidate for implementing as a web-based application.
I think one of the big reasons for Flash's popularity is that you can build complex things in it far more easily than with HTML. So, while you could theoretically hand-code some animation in HTML5+canvas, it's far faster to do it graphically in Flash -- which is why Flash still dominates web animation (and gaming). And while you can build interactive apps like GMail using JavaScript, it's prohibitively expensive for most medium or small companies to do so -- which is why static, full-page-refresh sites still dominate the web. (And it's also why GMail's level of interactivity still doesn't hold a candle to the richness of Flash sites built by larger companies).
p.s. -- there was at least one Flash email client, Goowy. Like many startups, it got acquired and killed. But there still are other Flash-based communication/social apps out there, such as TweetDeck.
Not true. Adobe says: "There are no restrictions on the development of SWF authoring tools, and anyone can build their own SWF or FLV/F4V player."
Think of it from Apple's perspective. You dump a few million into doing something cool for the iPhone .... Score! But wait, while this is built into the iPhone and Apple's developer tools, requiring just a recompile for app developers to make it happen for their app, what about third party tools? Suddenly you've got thousands of apps made with Adobe's tools and those don't get the improvements until Adobe gets around to implementing them in their Flash suite, if they ever do.
The opposite way to look at it would be this: Every app has to be recompiled for it to work. So -- there are 100,000 apps in the app store, and every single one of those developers has to get off their butt, recompile, submit a new version, wait for it to get approved, and then convince all their customers to download the upgrade. It'd take forever for the benefits to truly add up for any given user. But, if many of those apps were Flash-based, then you might just need to update a single app (the Flash runtime) to take advantage of all those compiled-in savings.