Slashdot Mirror
Flash On Android Is 'Shockingly Bad'
Hugh Pickens writes "Ryan Lawler writes on GigaOm that although many have touted the availability of Flash on Android devices as a competitive advantage over Apple's mobile devices, while trying to watch videos from ABC.com, Fox.com and Metacafe using Flash 10.1 on a Nexus One over a local Wi-Fi network connected to a 25-Mbps Verizon FiOS broadband connection, mobile expert Kevin Tofel found that videos were slow to load, if they loaded at all, leading to an overall very inconsistent experience while using his Android device for video. 'While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it's difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset,' writes Lawler. 'All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.'"
Flash on any platform is shockingly bad.
There are other things you can do with flash than just watch videos.
Is this really a shocking surprise? I don't mean to troll, but flash has brought us a lot of positives, but it runs so - so just about everywhere in my experiences.
At least Android users have the choice to install and view Flash content if they choose. iPhone users aren't allowed that choice.
I have Flash installed on my Moto Droid and have found performance quite lacking as well.
Can't it be said that all non optimized web content is 'Shockingly Bad' when viewed on a mobile device? Still better than nothing.
Bad? Streaming much of anything is bad on a mobile platform, at least OTA. As far as website use, Skyfire does flash on 3 different mobile platforms just fine.
"All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad." Or perhaps this just means this is the first iteration of the Android OS to attempt Flash compatibility and it obviously needs more time to mature? I hate flash as much as the next guy, but with as much content as there is out there that is based on Flash, if Android gets it working properly, it will be a big advantage over the iPhone OS.
I'll take limp home mode over being stranded 100 miles from civilization, any day of the week.
Sent from my PDP-11
...really? I'd rather have the option than not, but I guess that's why I don't buy iStuff anymore.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'd say 'predictably bad'.
Seriously, I knew it was going to slow my web pages down by about a zillion times, and so far it's delivered. So much of the web is rendered unusable in the default browser on my phone because of the flash plugin it's comical. Worse yet, there's no way that I know of to disable flash.
But the beauty of Android is that I can just use a different browser. Which I do. (thank you Opera!)
Flash On Android Is 'Shockingly Bad'
Yeah. It's Flash. We're used to it by now.
mobile expert Kevin Tofel found that videos were slow to load, if they loaded at all, leading to an overall very inconsistent experience while using [flash] for video.
Yep. I get that too on my desktop computer.
I have been watching video without any issues from several sites, plus flash is not only video.
Its the OPTION of having flash that makes it so great. If you don't like it, don't use it. But you cannot negate the fact that many users actually enjoy it. Period.
"All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.""
You make it sound as if both were mutually exclusive. Maybe that was what Steve wanted you to believe and you bought into it? Wake up, Android DOES support HTML5 as well as the iphone, while having much better javascript performance - crucial for HTML5 stuff.
I am surprised such a gross simplified statement made it into slashdot. Yeah, I must be new here...
This has been my experience as well with my Droid. I realize that the droid is a bit slower than other Android phones, but I hadn't had any trouble with watching HTML5 video on it, so I expected similar results with Flash. I was wrong. The few times I did get it to play, after let the player buffer for several minutes (on WiFi) it played in the single digit frame rates. I uninstalled it after a few days, as sites that had HTML5 video available still defaulted to Flash if they detected it. Having access to HTML5 video on only a portion of sites is preferable to me to having Flash for Android available on all sites. That should say something about just how bad it is.
What can I say.
Leave the country, move somewhere with a 21st century mobile infrastructure.
Learn to smoke, casually.
Lose weight.
Wear better clothes.
Talk with an accent.
Use a Nokia.
In short, become European. Life is better.
Deleted
But 2010 is the year of the Linux deskt^H^H^H^H^H phone!
i've been fighting this battle with idiots for the last 2 days... on a battery powered device, optimization has real world side effects... running code through an additional platform layer increases latency and response time and consumes more resources (CPU/battery). as long as the hardware and operating systems vary greatly between devices, the best solution will always be writing and compiling applications natively for each platform.
Question?
Have u guys heard of the term 'Propaganda'
If the headline of this was not it, then I know of no other definition of propagander.
My HTC NexusOne with flash 10.1 works fine. I haven't found a youtube video that won't play on it.
I haven't tried many flash games, because i haven't had a need to.
Even Strongbad's sbEmail's works fine. i don't notice any issues or lag or anything.
Perhaps he should look at not only his OS, but also his hardware and his connectivity, and also his expectations.
A phone is not a desktop. And if you don't have a physical keyboard, you're not going to be able to do certain things.
Given all that, I still prefer Android over iOS. and my phone over any of the iPhones.
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
With the latest firefox, it reports when flash crashes the browser. Guess what, I get the errors consistently with flash heavy websites. Flash sucks for playing videos smoothly. I'm sure there's plenty of people who have zero problems with flash running fast, and efficiently, but those must be adobe employees.
Flash is fine on my Nexus One. Its not quite the best experience and I'd imagine that really heavy players might not work well (hulu is abysmal, but their player seems to be really chunky), but it works out great when I'm reading a blog or following a twitter link, and someone has embedded a flash video. I know the iPhone does YouTube but there's plenty of other flash video sites, and my phone works on many more.
People also need to clean up their flash players for mobile use. Flash Video isn't the problem, that works fine. The problem is when people try to have a feature loaded flash player, and then it pukes. They need to have a simpler mobile version, but that's a lot easier than forcing them to write a whole new app, I think.
And when a player supports fullscreen video, its usually pretty nice. I actually prefer watching youtube videos embedded than loading the dedicated youtube app to watch them. Its easy to do either, but when its a short video I just like to click and go.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
Actually, it can be completely disabled or (my favorite) set to on-demand only. (think Flashblock)
Specifically, go to your default browser, hit menu and go to More... --> Settings --> System Settings --> Enable Plugins --> On demand (or Off, if you prefer)
What we have here is a new phone platform that provides a very common and desired feature the IPhone will never have according to their lord and savior Jesus....I mean Steve Jobs.....therefore this uninformed writer feels Steve was right because it doesn't work flawlessly?!?! Wow what if we were to say that about all technology on new platforms?? Totally insightful there buddy!!!
Always worked fine for me. Including several flash games off websites I've wanted to waste a little time on. Maybe this guy needs a better provider if his videos load to slow. Reminds me of all the people who bought new computers in the late 90's early 00's only to complain that it was 'just as slow downloading stuff as the old one'.
*DrugCheese rants*
Any n900 owners want to comment on their flash performance?
And I have been happy to be allowed to browse those sites on my Nexus One
You know what else is shockingly bad? That run-on sentence in the summary.
For the love of god, there's more to punctuation than just the comma.
What's important varies with the person.
I was very happy to be able to make a reservation at a place that unfortunately has a flash-only web site. My Nexus One phone could do it where in the past I had to wait till I got to a PC to use their site ( or forget to as sometimes happens )
Many of the big video sites have alternatives for non-flash platforms, but there's still a lot of web sites that are sticking with flash only. Some are less likely to change this if they created an iPhone app for access, leaving any non-Apple device stuck with their bloated flash site.
My personal priorities are for flash only web sites to work with video and flash games much lower in importance.
I use flash on my Evo to watch zeropunctuation and dailyshow clips with very few problems. And, really, that's all I need it for.
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
There's no maybe about it. Of course, Steve was correct. Chairman Steve is always correct. People who don't believe this should report at the nearest re-education camp (or Apple store, whichever is closer).
That is all.
Download Skyfire browser, it converts flash videos to HTML5 videos 'in the cloud' I have had good experiences with it so far.
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
Make web designers believe that, no more "interpreters" like flash or silverlight on web, and that its time to move to html5 when possible. Sometimes doing wrong math you get the right result.
Also, I'm not sure I agree with this assertion:
While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users,
You can do a lot more with flash than just watch video. The competitive advantage is just having flash at all.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
I never thought it'd be any good for most video.
How is it for non-video? Games? Simple non-video animations like StrongBad? Very simple video like the Zero Punctuation stuff?
(Full disclosure: today, I happen to be an iOS user and am content with the lack of Flash right now -- I usually disable it on my desktop too -- but I'm interested in how this all plays out, and willing to be persuaded.)
Only some of Jobs's reasons for banishing Flash are crap. That software rendering of video in a browser plug-in whose performance is at best mediocre makes for a sub-par experience is not one of them, especially when most of the video wrapped in those Flash containers are already in a format that could otherwise benefit from hardware acceleration.
Let's see, of my machines, flash sucks on:
...
My AMD Athlon 3.2 Ghz processor in my desktop
My old piece of crap Pentium driven Dell Inspiron 4100 laptop
My AMD Athlon 3.0 GHz media box attached to my computer
My roomate's AMD Celeron laptop
My parent's Intel Core 2 Duo driven Windows XP machine
My best friends Indel Core 2 Duo driven HP laptop
Am I missing any? Nah I don't think so. Granted I am running older hardware, but at least a couple of those setups should outperform a smartphone and, in the realm of Flash, they don't. I have to say Flash applications, movies, and games are the single most pain in the ass thing that I stumble across on the internet anymore. Do I still use them? Sure, most folks do. Do I yearn for the day when something less crappy that doesn't make my screen flash like a schizophrenic display unit gets set as a standard? You're damn right I do. Until then, I'll just keep taking more of the same...
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
...as opposed to Apple's devices that take it out of your hands completely by not giving you the option to view flash.
Also since flash on smart phones is relatively new, especially to the android platform, it is bound to get better with time and more powerful hardware.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
I am a developer, and I have to admit to my affinity for anime. I have tried flash on my nexus on most of the popular streaming sites (chrunchyroll, funimation, etc), and it works excellent, and their flash players are terrible. Most of the time, the player is the source of problems, not the framework. I think HTML5 is great as well (thewildernessdowntown.com/), but anyone who puts down Flash so adamantly is an idiot.
Ef, off, this is flamebait in its purest form.
Down in the comments for the story, someone has posted this counterexample to youtube. In it, he uses Flash to watch the video complaining about how badly Flash video works on mobile phones on his mobile phone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb9jfdltkUU
Well, first of all, Flash on android has been out for the better part of a month, depending on what device you have. Sorry that you can't watch every video on the internet on a .1 release of something. Just because everything from the desktop platform doesn't translate perfectly to the mobile platform is not a reason to not include the ability to use it.
Some > none, especially with the prospect of the platform *maturing*.
"While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it's difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset," writes Lawler. "All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.""
How is it difficult to imagine people watching web videos on their handset? Concerning optimized versus non-optimized, this is exactly why Adobe has guidelines to optimize videos for mobile flash player (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/articles/delivering_video_fp10.1.html) and part of the reason this person had an inconsistent experience with trying to watch flash video on their handset.
This quote seems to also be saying that if a software company can't deliver a feature 100% bug-free and perfect on the first version, then don't try at all. If that were the case, Apple shouldn't have allowed mobile safari to parse any HTML5 and just stuck with HTML4 - trying to run several chrome experiments (www.chromeexperiments.com) on an iPad when it first came out resulted in failure, while I was able to use them on my desktop computer. This whole thing just sounds like an uneducated half-nerd decided he'd get in on the flame war between apple fanboys and android fanboys just for the hell of it. I have a feeling they don't know that both flash and html5 aren't solely video technologies and it's kinda sad they are getting any press at all.
The main advantage to flash on mobile devices is to be able to create applications with all of Adobe's tools and have them run on the device. Flashtime is a good example. It is a p2p voip service developed through Adobe AIR. Just thinking about flash for video isn't what the advantage is and the OP missed that.
TFA makes it sound shocking that something like video loaded through Flash would be slow on a processor with as much horsepower as the NexusOne's 1GHz Snapdragon.
I would have assumed something like a 1GHz, low voltage, cell phone CPU would have trouble with video in flash, especially since I routinely see 1.6GHz ATOM processors struggle with it. Even my old Athlon 64 3200+ struggled loading ABC's online video section and that was a 2GHz desktop CPU with 1GB of RAM that drew, what, like 135 watts TDP? And this cellphone CPU should have "plenty of horsepower" for it?
Taking this article at face value, frankly, it sounds like Flash on Android is working surprisingly well actually. Especially considering you can set the plugin to on-demand on the NexusOne and only click to load the flash content you actually want to see. With that sort of implementation, it seems like this fits the bill pretty well right now. Obviously, future enhancements could make it a lot more useful, but I think given the overall performance we have all come to expect from Flash, this is not any kind of shocker.
But I could just be crazy.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
I load sites with flash every day and over 3G without issue.
I actually watch flash stuff without issue over 3G.
Am I just lucky or is the test flawed?
I also use it on a Nexus one.
The biggest problem with Flash on Android is the lack of FlashBlock - visiting a site with multiple Flash ads is total hell.
Then there's embedded YouTube videos - playing them with Flash sucks compared to using the YouTube app and it seems to force you to watch embedded videos with Flash. I've yet to figure out how to get it to allow me to fall back to the YouTube app.
My solution is to uninstall Flash, and only install it as I really need it. Even then, it's iffy if Flash will work when I need it.
not sure why this is so hard for people to grasp.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Many of you have said that it's at least nice to have the option on Android which is true. However, not allowing flash in iPhones/iPads/ITouches has forced content providers to use something other than Flash which actually has lead to having some options. Otherwise we'd all be stuck with Flash.
The most CPU power consuming part in watching episodes is the playing of the video it self.
And most modern machines (be it desktop with their graphic card or embed device with their SIMD & GPU units) *DO HAVE* hardware acceleration for most modern formats (that's what they use for video in HTML5. Or *should use* if the demo runs like a snail)
So if watching an episode is like a slideshow on these machines, it's a situation of :
- In the case of the Pentium 4 - no hardware acceleration being available (move to a Radeon HD 4670, they are available on AGP bus and *DO* feature H.264 acceleration, older AGP GPU may lack it)
- Hardware acceleration not taken advantage of (if this version of Flash is 100% pure ARM, and doesn't leverage the Neon SIMD extension, nor the embed GPU - Usually some PowerVR) - that would probably be moronic since there's lots of SIMD+GPU code floating around that could be harnessed for an Android Flash.
- Unsupported video format (there's SIMD+GPU code available for H264, older MPEG4 and other MPEGs, even for Theora, and soon WebM - But I don't know if there's for the older Flash Video codecs like VP6). In this case HTML5 won't save you either (or at least until HTML5 explicitly requires a specific codec, like WebM)
- Pure sloppy programming - if the rest of the Flash implementation is completely b0rked, no hardware accelerated magic can save the situation.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm deaf, dependent on captioning to understand any video at all. And given a choice between bad captioning and no captioning, I'll take no captioning any day of the week. Consider how crappy and distracting youtube's automated captions are (for the most part)
So you can't watch ABC videos on Android, and you can't watch them on the iPhone either. Maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew an equal feature set in lieu of an equal capability set.
As long as Flash runs slow, hardware manufacturers will continue pushing the envelope. This drives multi-core ARM, produces better mobile GPUs. I welcome the day my home 'desktop' is a phone I simply dock into a tv and switch OSes via a hypervisor like vmware are developing.
I went to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer with my Android phone and was told the player only supports the Nexus One phone.
(not mine.)
Whatever. As already pointed out, it really has nothing to do with Flash. The videos in question are simply not optimized for mobile consumption, they would suck just as bad in HTML5. I usually try to stay out of the whole Flash vs. HTML5 hurrah, but seriously, get a grip. HTML5 will not replace Flash. I have my issues with adobe, just like the next guy, but Flash is so much more than HTML5. Look at Hulu for example. Hulu wasn't scared by the HTML5 hype, they came right out and said what everybody already knows: even for video, HTML5 cannot replace Flash except for in the simplest of cases. Now, I have an Android running Flash, and it plays any video fit for mobile consumption just fine, I would even dare say fast. To boot, the overall Flash experience on Android is good, better than I expected even. I think Adobe has a narrow window in which to redeem themselves. If they can just focus, and get the Flash player streamlined across platforms (it is a definite hog on pretty much all desktop OS's), and pull their heads out and release a 64bit Linux player, then this will all go away. Otherwise we have at least 2 more years of these ad revenue prompted sensationalist "Flash Sucks" headlines, only to be ousted by "HTML5 Sucks" headlines down the road, first due to cross browser compatibility nightmares (javascript anyone?), only to eventually be trumped by "OMG, HTML5 is S Slow!" headlines after everyone's code is hacked and bloated to death trying to deal with multiple browser targets. This is the last I will ever chime in on this (maybe), so seriously, think for your damn selves for once and quit allowing yourselves to be all stirred up by a bunch of BS media shenanigans that started with none other than Steve Jobs, the master of media shenanigans himself. Or, continue to get off by complaining about Flash, and touting the wonders of HTML5 (which probably 80% of the "me too" idiots have probably never even demoed). Whatever, HTML5 is not the answer, in fact it is a step backwards, deal with it.
If people think they need Flash, they'll buy Android over Apple. Perception...
You guys are better than this. This isn't news, this is a hit piece.
Anybody who chooses to run flash on an Android phone knows that some sites works, some don't. When they don't work, the world doesn't end and the phone doesn't explode, you just go on with your life. No shock, no awe, it just doesn't load and you go do something else.
There, is that really so "shockingly bad"?
YouTube works fine on my Desire.
Because it's not shockingly bad. There's downsides to it, to be sure. Some really weird design choices. But anyone who calls it "shockingly bad" is either working from some weird bias or trolling for page hits.
Everything will be taken away from you.
google and apple.
Apple wants a good user experience and to differentiate themselves from competitors. Flash doesn't allow either.
Google wants to sell advertising. Flash ads are more expensive.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Flash On $PLATFORM Is 'Shockingly Bad'
it used to be that everyone hated flash with a passion, at least around here anyways.
but if we don't stop using it, if we keep it alive as an option, it'll never go away!
That video is really damning. Choppy scrolling before the flash video loads, and horrible framerate. By contrast, the ABC app on the ipad is quite robust and the hardware acceleration of video playback means that it is quite smooth.
That said, HTML5 isn't a panacea - if a Youtube video is HD, the ipad can only load the HD version of it, not the lower quality options available on the flash site. This means that if you have a slightly slower connection (say, 3Mbps or so), you'll get tons of buffering trying to play those videos. The dynamic bitrates of Netflix and ABC work great though. It's a little ironic that the Youtube app included with the ipad is relatively poor, though.
Personally, I hate flash. I use noscript to block it most of the time, and even on a Core 2 Duo running Linux the performance can be pretty choppy sometimes (thanks to a lack of hardware acceleration). Unfortunately, with Hulu trying to make money off the ipad (insanely priced relative to Netflix), we won't be seeing an HTML5 version of that site any time soon.
Unless there's something seriously wrong with this demonstration, though, it's clear that Flash support is not a strong bonus of going Android over iOS.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
No flash on iPhone/iPad..."ZOMG THEY'RE STIFLING CREATIVITY AND CLOSING THE PLATFORM AND MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO DEVELOP IN OUR NATIVE LANGUAGE AND WON'T LET ANYTHING ON THEIR STUPID DEVICES APPLE SUCKS!!"
Flash on Android sucks big balls (as it does on every other platform in existance): "Well, yeah, of course it's shitty, it's bad on the desktops too! And It's useless anyway, it's only used for video and crappy animations and that sort of thing, and I can't wait for it to go away because it's horrible."
So, if I understand correctly, Apple out and out says no to Adobe's flash platform, and it's a slight against programmers and open source and this and that yadda yadda yadda. If a developer then tries to put it onto another device and it shows WHY it was never really meant to be on such a platform, then we admit that it's basically useless and shitty and wasn't worth it to begin with.
Fuck! The Apple store is closer! I'm screwed!
"His name was James Damore."
In general I have to say that flash on android is no better than flash on windows or 32bit linux. The same problems exist on all platforms that I have used with 10.1. I do however wish that adobe would see these issues and identify some bugs and fix them.. constantly they get a bad rap and do nothing about it.. For that reason alone I am a big fan of banning flash despite believing that the concept could be good..
Shockingly bad flash video??
No wonder Steve didn't want that fucking shit on his iPhone! I'd have stuck with the iPhone 4 if I could have gotten thru one conversation without redialing. It's a shame.....
I'm running Flash on my HTC Desire (basically the same as the Nexus One in spec) and whilst it's certainly not without it's problems, it's really not that bad when you consider the hardware it's running on. I prefer HTML5 video over Flash video any day of the week, but if Flash is all that is on offer (as is the case with lots of sites) then you take what you can get. Some sites already serve up mobile optimised versions of their flash vids which work just fine and I guess some others will do soon too. Give it some more time and hopefully the majority of sites will have adopted HTML5 video and we'll all be happy. Until then, you simply need to choose between no video, or sub-standard video.
Video is a red herring. Bandwidth will catch up. It always does. Or have you forgotten the bad old days of watching postage-stamp-sized video barely playing from your hard disk, and not playing at all across the net?
If apple had a more open app store then the need for flash will not be as bad.
people will trade a poor flash plug in for apps that can do some of what you find in flash games / other flash apps.
Have you tried using Adobe Flash Lite? Stfu and be happy with what you have.
I have a Nexus One and I don't have trouble with Flash. Obviously if you try to load a piss poor flash app, you get piss poor performance.
In my opinion this guy is nothing but a tool looking for page views on his media website.
I watch BBC television live on my Nexus One without a problem. Both on 3G and Wifi. The only problem is that clicking the fullscreen button (without zooming in) is hell!
Youtube works great on my N900.
However, other sites do not, like the Daily Show. But of course, sometimes the Daily Show videos don't work on my PC either. Original post has some merit.
Flash video on my Nexus One is hit-or-miss - sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's barely watchable. Flash video on my wife's iPhone is always miss - she doesn't even know there's video there. If it's not YouTube, she's out of luck completely, whereas I can mostly get something usable.
It's all the non-video uses of Flash that make the real difference though. See how far you get on homestarrunner.com without it; they're not going to convert all that older content to HTML5 any time soon, so iOS users will never see it. When my kids (or myself) are bored, it's very handy having a Flash-capable mobile device around.
Choice >> no choice, regardless of some bloke's experiences with a handful of sites.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Sorry, but you're wrong, and so is Apple. No users are directly "effected" unless they choose to be. By your same "logic", any baby that's not ideal for every possible use should be thrown out with the bathwater, and users should be prevented from having anything to do with those terrible things whether they want it or not.
Sure, Flash sucks for some videos - and it's fine for others. A lot of Flash games don't play well on a mobile device - but some do. Flash ads are annoying - but Flash animations like Homestar Runner are awesome, work great, and I can pick and choose when & what Flash I see. If HTML5 was a valid alternative right now, you might have a point, but it isn't, and won't ever be an alternative for all the existing flash sites out there.
The fact that this argument is still on-going shows that there is still much demand for Flash. Apple can choose to exclude those customers if it wants, you can buy into that if you want, but I for one am very very glad that Android is a viable alternative that gives me the choice of HTML5 and Flash.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Nonsense.
I have a Nexus One.
Flash works just fine.
There is also the YouTube app, which runs if you do not have Flash.
There is no discernible difference.
This is just Apple Fanbois trolling..
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
It doesn't seem that bad. I haven't had any of the "slow to load" issues mentioned, perhaps "Ryan Lawler"'s connection was having some latency issues. The main problem is in most cases, the UI elements are embedded in the actual flash video itself, which is outside of control of the Android flash plugin. If adobe came up with some "smart" way to make these larger or more small-screen friendly, it could work.
There's also a fullscreen option that appears in the top left-hand corner when you long press the video, which is very useful.
You have Adobe making a language that all phones can run, and it is being reported on its first iteration. NOTHING works perfectly. I've only viewed one video on my First Gen Moto Droid, and it was abysmal, HOWEVER, I didn't expect it to be fantastic. Some day these sites will employ some kind of standards and start optimizing them for mobile devices. Why? Because it's what WE want. If Apple were to go in the same direction and offer Flash as well, we'd see things change quite quickly. Alas they're unfortunately content in making enemies of their users. At least the network isn't Apples fault, right? My prophecy is that in the second and third editions it will improve markedly... I mean, really, it can't get much worse than it is right now lol
I told you so. Sent from my iPhone
No users are directly "effected" unless they choose to be.
Is Flash something you must specifically enable?
If not, and it comes enabled by default - every single user WILL be affected by Flash. A number of users may not be able to figure out how to turn it off, and even for those that can figure that our they'll have to go through a few sites before they do so. And in the meantime they'll suffer really sluggish browsing performance on any site with Flash ads (watch the video).
If HTML5 was a valid alternative right now, you might have a point, but it isn't
But it is, there's pretty much nothing I miss on the iPhone except a handful of sites like Homestar Runner.
And there's plenty of video you are going to miss relying on Mobile Flash, including Hulu...
The fact that this argument is still on-going shows that there is still much demand for Flash.
For a while there was large demand for floppy disks too after Apple got rid of them. Current demand is hardly indicative of future success.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The problem here is "shit" is whatever the person removing it decides it is.
they would suck just as bad in HTML5
That is totally incorrect. An iPhone (and really any webkit based browser today) can play back h.264 encoded video via HTML5, with a 720p feed easily (if they have the bandwidth).
The fact is that support for hardware acceleration makes HTML5 video playback far superior in what level of video it can handle.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
nuff said...
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
Well, it's still better than my flash performance on the iPhone . . . Watching the same episode of Bones on my iPhone, I got 0 FPS.
All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad
It's not about whether Flash sucks (it does), it's about having the choice instead of having Jobs make the choice for me.
I can't say for Android but a student at work has a jailbroken iPhone and he put Flash on it. He tried out Homestarrunner.com and that worked great. You could go and watch the cartoons, no problem.
I think far too many people believe Flash is just for video. No, that is one of its most popular uses, but Flash's original purposes are interactivity and vector graphics. It is still used in that capacity for many websites, in particular for games.
Can HTML 5 do that? Sure. Does it do a good job oh it? Eh... Well... We'll see. There are two major issues that need to be addressed:
1) Content creation tools. While putting together a static layout may be fine in markup language, and there's plenty of easy editors for that too, it is not fine for the advanced Flash-like stuff. You need a tool like, well, like Adobe Flash (I mean actual Flash not Flash Player). I'm (fairly) sure such a thing can be made for HTML 5. However until such tools are out there and are good to go, saying HTML 5 is the right decision is very premature. Doesn't mean you shouldn't support it, but that saying you ONLY support it isn't a good idea.
2) Speed for interactive, vector type, apps. In my experience, HTML 5/CSS 3 is dog slow in current browsers that support it. MS has a little page for IE 9 to show off all its neat features. Now when comparing a browser to IE9 with that a grain of salt is needed because of course MS designed it to make IE 9 look good. However it is useful to compare a browser to Flash. You'll see many simple little things, the likes of which are done in Flash on your computer all the time. In FF3 and Chrome, when I've tried them, they run extremely slowly. I'm sure that'll change as those browsers get hardware acceleration and are optimized, but none the less stuff that would run well in Flash drags hard in the browser itself.
The problem with the "Fuck Flash HTML5 is the future!" is that while it may be true, Flash is the present. Right now, Flash is used for a lot of shit and works better than anything else. Will that change? Probably but is hasn't. So not having Flash means hurting your user experience.
To me this would be like saying "Fuck DVD, Blu-ray is the future," and having a drive that only supports Blu-ray. Sure, I bet in 5-10 years DVDs will be pretty rare, most people will use Blu-rays. They are just like DVD but with more storage and higher rez. However now DVDs are still king. It would be silly to stop DVD support just because Blu-ray is the "future".
As such I don't believe Apple decision to refuse Flash is based on wanting what's best for the user, it is based on wanting what is best for Apple.
Flash is not just video. Flash is required for plenty of useful websites - one example is hotel sites. I'm arriving overseas, I go to check the location or contact number of my hotel - but the site is in flash. Similar situations have occurred several times when using my iPhone. Another common examples is band websites.
As others have noted, the choice of at least using the latest Flash can only be a good thing and it's a win for Android over the iPhone, no argument.
Apple clearly have a strategy against Adobe, but it may well be that Flash is more important to consumers than they would like. Even my non-geek friends and relatives are astounded when they find that an iPhone can't use a lot of websites. Still, from a third party point of view, either Apple loses, which is a win for openness, or Apple win, which means no more Flash. Either way, it's a step forward.
Looking forward to getting an Android phone when my contract expires.
RS.
In Firefox. Currently it has completely pegged one of my cores, and has some birds flying around with a very jerky frame rate. Nothing else seems to be happening. So with a little bit of animation it can being FF to its knees. I don't know if it is supposed to be doing anything else, but Flash could do the bird thing easily, without slowing the browser down (other tabs are dog slow currently as FF uses only one core).
Now I know, I know, this was made for Chrome. Even warned me. Guess what? That is NOT a point in HTML5's favour. If things only work well on one browser that helps nothing. Firefox is a major in the browser market, only IE might have more marketshare (and FF may have overtaken it, haven't checked). So on the major browser this little thing can't even run at a good speed? On a fucking Core 2 Quad 2.8GHz?
With Flash it would run well, and do so on any browser.
Now, I'm not saying HTML 5 won't get better. I'm not saying that 5 years from now such a page won't run great on everything. What I'm saying is it doesn't NOW. HTML 5 is not ready for prime time in any way shape or form.
First all the major browsers need to support it well. By that I mean implement the features and be able to run it fast. It needs to be something that doesn't only work on certain browsers or slow things down badly and so on.
Next there needs to be good development tools. If you've ever actually used Flash, as in the actual Flash program not Flash Player, that's what I mean. Something that can design animation and interactive content easily and graphically. Writing lots of markup is not an acceptable method.
Only then, once browser support is good and the tools are good, should sites start transitioning to HTML 5 on a large scale. It has to be good for end users to use first, then sites can look at it.
As it stands, Flash gets shit done. Doesn't matter if you don't like it, it works.
You seem to have swallowled the idea that simply playing some video should require a multi-core 100+ watt machine whole. Amazing. Truly amazing.
To others, sane people, the idea that a atom struggles with a low res video is a damning condemnation of coding standards. What is it with flash that makes people accept you need a multi-core rig consuming more power then a washing machine to do some 2d animation we did years ago on early pentiums?
Do you buy a car and accept that it does 1 mile to the gallon getting out of the drive way? Oh... wait SUV. Guess people do.
Play video through flash and play the exact same same through mplayer. See the cpu difference. THAT is why Adobe sucks donkey balls and all flash developers should be shot.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What is with Flash that is actually bad? is it the design or the implementations? Flash works well on Windows, so I think that the design is ok, it is the Mac, Linux and mobile devices implementations that suck.
I recently bought a N900, which is the only mobile that uses the desktop version of Flash. I hate to say it, but the web is not the same without video: there is too much valuable information out there in videos, and much entertainment as well. The N900 plays most videos ok, even if it is Flash 9.
So, does anyone know if Flash sucks by design or by implementation?
If the places you're going to look for your Flash video content aren't optimized for mobile, of course it's going to be a bad experience.
I use it regularly on my HTC Desire for BBC iPlayer who do actually bother to optimize their video content - the result is that I can catch up on my favourite BBC shows and I'm quite impressed by the quality and experience.
If the videos aren't optimized for mobile, it's no worse than trying to use a netbook to watch a 1080p movie. I call FUD.
It's not "mobile" anymore if you need to be next to a power outlet to use it.
Flash on mobile is a joke. On my N900 is drains the battery, you can feel the device getting hot.
They drove a wedge into Flash. They're forcing web site designer to accommodate people without Flash. That's fucking awesome. Without the iPhone we would have even more sites requiring Flash, and there would be even less competitive incentive for Adobe to improve their terrible plugin.
So yeah, the worldwide Web would suck a lot more if Steve Jobs didn't have that foresight.
And btw, 50% of what makes the iPad great is the battery life. 10h in full use. Imagine if they had flash, people would have no idea why suddenly their battery is draining down. They would blame Apple, because that's what it says on the can.
It's a plugin, and it's incompatible with the open web. Without the iPhone and its lack of Flash, we would see even more sites requiring Flash.
If people have a poor experience with it, they'll simply turn it off. And that's a big part of why people are upset.
I don't see anyone upset here but Adobe astroturfers. Flash is a piece of shit on mobile. On my N900 it drains the battery in half an hour, while my iPad works for 10h of *full* use. Asking the user to "disable a plugin" is not user-friendly. And if it wasn't for Apple doing away with Flash, you wouldn't even be able to to "disable the plugin" without being able to use half the web.
And people are not upset, they're buying millions of iPod and iPad. They're also buying millions of Android devices, but certainly not because of Flash.
That's what it feels when browsing a web site with flash on it on my N900.
And you don't always know that there's flash somewhere.
On the other hand, I'm glad I know I can trust my iPad to last for 10h of full use on a single full charge, even if that means that I can't see annoying ads or poorly designed websites.
I am using Flash on HTC Desire with Android 2.2 installed and it works fine over Telstra 3G connection, for video and some games. The main issue is some apps dont work well on small screen.
Steve Jobs doesn't want flash off device because of speed or quality, he wants it off because it prevents easy development of cross platform web apps/games which would potentially reduce market share from the app store.
I've found in numerous test over wifi & 3G the HTC Desire loads pages faster than iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 or iPad...and can load flash if a site requires it.
I find so far the iPad has really slow web loading, so adding flash would probably kill it...
Really? You couldn't split that first sentence ... anywhere? That is just pathetically bad writing.
I'm not a fanboy, I don't own Apple products.
It looks like Steve Jobs steered right.
If he put flash on the iPhone, the iPhone and Apple would have gotten a black eye. Instead Steve Jobs just came off as a quality loving, game playing, control freak. Much better IMO.
Instead, after the debate about Flash that Steve Jobs added volume too and now flash sucking on Android, flash is highlighted twice, as needing to improve.
I wish I had modpoints ...
It's not like google doesn't support HTML5, being able to use flash on a device that you keep in your pocket is just convenient. Unfortunately, the web was built incorrectly, first activeX has to disappear, so does flash.
Do you think you can point to a single piece of creative-anything made in the past 5 years that doesn't have an element of some kind of Adobe product in it? It's universal at this point.
That's hardly an indication that everybody loves them. It just means that since they bought Macromedia, they're the only game in town.
It's like arguing that because everybody uses Microsoft products, Microsoft must have the very best available.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
On my Android 2.2 (Froyo) Nexus One I watch all sorts of flash videos from all sorts of sites. Testing out the videos in the article, I don't see the problem. Oh, and guess what? I have the highest tier of Verizon FIOS. Same exact specs as the article.
My major gripe with Flash on Android is the difficulty in scrolling ahead. As many others have said, the controls don't work well. I can pause and play, but trying to get back to where I previously left off is a pain.
All in all, as a Nexus One user I'm satisfied with Flash. I just hope the interface gets better.
Fantastic, so we have a news story based on anecdotal evidence of a single person at a single hotspot? Not having an Android-based phone, or even coming into contact with one yet, I feel I am superbly qualified to pitch in on this discussion!
The reason I posted this under it's own header is simply because I wanted to say News Flash! even though I know if I scroll up I'll see it at least 50 times. But also, there wasn't any one post I could "reply" to, there were many that I could put this under. So many people say the same thing, "Works fine for me." Obviously the guy in the original article had some issue with his phone. I have a 20Mbps FIOS line at home too, I'm lucky if I get 80KB/sec and I get disconnects all the time. Why? My NIC card sucks (I'm guessing, everyone else on my network has no problems, and I recently put in an old D-Link card that works like a champ).
What is my NIC? It's an Intel CT Gigabit, very common and very well spoken of by reviewers on Newegg (5/5 eggs, 102 reviews)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106033&Tpk=EXPI9301CTBLK
BUT because it sucks on my system, that must mean that Intel NICs suck! Boo Intel!
Boo Intel! Boo Flash on Android! Yay individual anecdotes!
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They're not walling off their web browser, they're walling off the apps. I don't like the latter. But Flash is much worse, because it's forced on you by stupid web designers (such as web sites you HAVE to use, like your bank's or a gov't org or airline), nobody's forcing you to buy apps.
when using the gstreamer-based libraries included, because it's hardware optimized.
Flash does not use them because otherwise they couldn't get to push DRM down your throat.
Apple's HTML Live Stream of the keynote was pretty impressive. There were some hiccups, but overall the performance was outstanding, as was the resolution and quality. Worked great on my iPhone and on my 1st gen MacBook I was able to watch the keynote at high resolution and quality without the fans going ballistic like they always do with Flash, even tiny videos drive the processor bonkers with Flash. The CPU stayed below 20%, often 15%, and this isn't a recent Mac. I was even browsing the web in another window and it was at 15% most of the time, never going above 20%. Stop thumping the proprietary Flash drum. Apple has always been one to drop dated technologies and pushed them to a deserved obsolescence more quickly. Flash is the same thing as the floppy drive.
--- What?
Works well on my EVO. Very well actually.
A million times better than it works on the iPhone too!
Plus, Android browsers support HTML5 as well as Flash. There's really no downside.
There's a free app called Cloud Browse for iPhone that lets you run Firefox on a remote server, including Flash. Not really the sort of thing that you'd want to use for video or games, but it is handy for web sites that require Flash for basic functionality. I don't know if there is a similar alternative available for the Android platform.
Apparently you haven't seen the html5 games that are coming out now that developers are actually learning to work with a standard.
Oh, and anything developed in html5 bypasses the app store entirely, something Google learned pretty quick apparently as they keep porting their services to html5.
Welcome to practically every video streaming website using a different kind of flash player, with not all of them working that well in the first place. For the first iteration of Flash on Android, it does pretty well. I can watch streaming video from a number of websites with embedded players.
Maybe next time you should wait until v. 2 of a brand new application for a platform that is relatively new to the scene, before you start declaring it broken. Plus you never want Steve Jobs hear you say he was right. Don't say things we will all regret.
I think you all are forgetting the biggest point of Jobs banning flash impact on battery life.
While browsing a flash site on my laptop or watching a flash video my processor cores go to 50-100% usage and est. battery time goes from 4hours to 1 hour its like playing a id software game with everything on high, flash is just a badly written piece of crap and should be boycotted at all costs.
I don't own a Iphone or ipad since my 3 year old Sony ericsson still makes phonecalls and my laptop still breathes but those 2 devices are my next buys.
I would buy some of the android phones if they werent all blunt rip offs of the iPhone when they make a original device with a original ui then i'll prolly buy it but i prefer to buy from innovators not the copy cats.
...with something less frustrating. Like a brick of blue Lego perhaps.
I'd rather live in a country where it's legal to eat shit, even if I never intend to do so myself. Because when they outlaw shit, that means they're telling me what I can and can't eat, and next thing you know, they'll be outlawing burgers because they're unhealthy, or certain brands of chocolate for being too orgasmic, or...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
They didn't use it because it wasn't there until a later version.
However, many people on that newsgroup justified the lack of a feature by pretending that real pros would never need it.
I then gave an example of a "feature" that was a truly unprofessional bad joke, and then their disgusting response by committing the greatest abuse of the DMCA so far. A man went to jail merely for pointing out their incompetence.
Anyway, it's not "irrational hating" (whatever happened to "hatred"?), simply making a point that your defence of flash is as silly as the undo example above.
Flash is crap even if professionals need to put up with it.
Skyfire on windows mobile rocks although it would be economically unfeasible for larger user base platforms...
I don't follow. I watched some daily show and colbert report episodes using a captivate and an evo and it played more than acceptably. Honestly entices me, seeing as how the only flash on my iphone 4 that will seem to work in the near future will be the frash port that who knows when it will get flv support. Maybe the nexus one doesn't have a great flash implementation compared to evo and captivate?
But sometimes you have to step back from the computer, and realize that much of what you do requires extensive expertise.
Installing Flash block? Installing an alternative browser? Knowing what Flash is? What Flash block is? What a browser is? Most people don't know. And therefore, most people will get their battery drained by that POS Flash.
And btw, I'm surprised at the number of Linux users here supporting this utmost POS Flash. And before you point out I have an iPad, that's my only piece of proprietary equipment, and I bought it because there is no similar product from anyone. until at least 6 months in the future.
The fact that this argument is still on-going shows that there is still much demand for Flash. Apple can choose to exclude those customers if it wants, you can buy into that if you want, but I for one am very very glad that Android is a viable alternative that gives me the choice of HTML5 and Flash.
The fact that there is still much argument about Sarah Palin to this day, shows me she must have been great candidate and there is still demand for politicians like her. I for one am very glad the Republicans give me the choice of Sarah Palin on the ticket.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Erm... Have you heard of tablet computers?
Have you /tried/ an iPad? There's nothing else like it right now, and for the next few months at least. Those that claim to be are complete crap (Archos), and/or have disastrous battery life (Windows-based tablet laptops), or do not exist yet (Android).
10h in full use is what I get. When the screen's turned off, like if I'm using it as an ipod with a bluetooth headset, I've had it run for 3h and stay at 99% battery.
Examine your own motives -- I wouldn't be terribly surprised that you're justifying the lack of Flash furiously only as a kind of Stockholm Syndrome because you want to justify your truly, truly crippled tablet computer purchase.
No. I hate Flash, always have. Use Flashblock. And before having an iPad I got an N900, and it proved without a doubt that Jobs is right, it's disastrous on mobile, esp. for battery life. And if you don't understand that battery life is one of the most important factors for mobile applications, it's no surprise you keep rehashing irrelevant nonsense.
There are things you can do with a laptop that you can't do with an iPad. That's not really a surprise considering the iPad is not and was not meant to be a laptop.
Similarly there are things you can do with a desktop PC that you can't do with a laptop. Who'd have thunk?
Anyway, don't buy one if you don't want one but don't go around claiming you know it sucks. It fills a very specific role very well. I tried reading books on a laptop -- it's not convenient. It works very well on an iPad, and the 10h battery life makes it very usable.
looks like it's doomed to fail on any platform, except the PC.