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Adobe Brings Flash-Free Flash To iOS Devices
CWmike writes "At long last Adobe Flash has come to an iPad or iPhone, writes Jonny Evans. Adobe appeared at Europe's NAB equivalent, IBC, this week to introduce Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5 and Adobe Flash Access 3.0. Adobe's solution repackages content in real-time, changing the protocol to suit the target device, HTTP Dynamic Streaming or HLS, for example. This should mean that iOS devices will get much of the advantages of Flash video support, without the processor degradation and battery life cost of the format in use on other devices. 'With Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5, media publishers now have a single, simple workflow for delivering content using the same stream to Flash-enabled devices or to the Apple iPhone and iPad,' Adobe says."
I'm not sure if this is a screwp apple move, or giving in. Will it let me play flash games on the wife's stupid iPhone, or do I still have to pony up $2 each time I'm bored?
It's called "video".
Streaming to iOS devices makes total sense for FMS. Link bait.
But the format will be the same, the protocol changes is all. It will be equally intensive for an apple device to decode the h.264 data or whatever its encoded as. Sorry apple but you can't skip decoding with costing cpu and battery life with a magic leprechaun 'format'
No, because the Flash content is on the server and it's streamed to the device. The vulnerabilities are thus not introduced to the device.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
If it's streaming using HTTP, then there has to be vulnerability in the browser. It has nothing to do with the client side Flash, this is for Flash media servers. Furthermore, this doesn't bring the full Flash in to iDevices, only media streaming. Flash is a lot more than that. People seem to forget that every time. It's also one of the reasons why HTML5 video will never replace Flash completely.
And say what you want about Flash, but web would had been much more boring place the last 10 years if it wasn't for Flash. It also brought casual people to internet.
I don't use flash or have it installed on my computer you insensitive clod! Really, I don't.
This is a silly, biased article and summary. This does NOT bring Flash to iOS devices. This is merely Adobe spinning out a new version of their video serving software with a new protocol option than plays nice with iOS devices.
The things Flash is really good at -- multimedia experiences that can be delivered to a wide audience via a ubiquitous plugin -- are not emulated here. But way to go timothy for trolling! You wear your bias on your editorial sleeve.
If this is really better for video on mobile devices then will it work on Android also? And why not use it on laptops too, they can always benefit from better battery life.
The things Flash is really good at -- multimedia experiences that can be delivered to a wide audience via a ubiquitous plugin
The thing is, Flash SUCKS at that. Can you name a single site that really does that well? The only thing I can think of off hand is the MINIUSA configurator. But even there the site is rife with all the things that make Flash a terror - I can't copy text from just anywhere, sometimes the loading goes wrong, and the site bogs down my DESKTOP never mind what would happen to a mobile device.
Pretty much every other site I've seen that relies heavily on Flash for a "rich multimedia experience" is just awful, non-intuitive and performs very badly. So many sites trying that kind of thing would be so much better serving users simplifying the site into something that would work with DHTML, never mind HTML5 and canvas stuff...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Will it let me play flash games on the wife's stupid iPhone
I'm not sure why you'd expect it would given they wouldn't work on any Android device that supported Flash either.
No keyboard and mouse after all, which just about every Flash game expects...
When you are bored you might try downloading one of the 100k+ free games for the iPhone (some of which are even ports of the Flash games you were looking for to begin with!!)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
bonch
SuperKendall
How many other Apple sockpuppet/troll accounts do you have loser?
'nuff said.
If there wasn't Flash, there's be something else. We wouldn't be sitting around in the living room staring at the radio.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
This: http://www.amazon.com/Developing-iOS-Applications-Flex-4-5/dp/1449308368/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315630374&sr=1-1
Adobes only goal here is to stop the slow but steady adoption of html5 video formats. By offering this upgrade they tell their clients they no longer have to work in a transition to target the huge and growing iOS user base.
This is good for Apple as most video services are just a server patch away from providing video content to iOs users, drastically diminishing the "it cant play flash video" bashing competitors like to use.
Flash gaming may not be available still, but most iOS users are far from game starved. It's video content most iOS users actually complain about.
So, good for Apple and good for Adobe. Who is it bad for? Web standards, and perhaps Android users. Adobe still wants flash to be required anywhere that it can run so it's likely they won't offer the same HTML5 video streams to Android devices. Many of the handsets out there still can't handle flash properly and the ones that do do so with heavy battery penalties.
With this available, it's very unlikely content providers will bother pursuing web standards for the sake of low end Android handsets or users that refuse to install flash in their computers.
It's likely that sooner or later Adobe will provide the capabilities for all clients, but I doubt they have any intentions to do it soon. I do hope im wrong though.
PS: unsure if it's related but have been streaming blip.tv episodes of the Nostalgia Critic on my iPad all night so I guess at least they (blip.tv) already updated.
Yes, but that something else would likely draw the same criticisms that Flash does.
I'll remind myself of that when I'm having to install the next biweekly update for that buggy security risk on the dozens of computer I administrate.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This sounds like the best complaint against flash ever. Flash 1. caused pages to contain far more worthless noise makers, longer loading times, and stop focusing so much on including content etc... 2. Brought the kind of people who like big flashing noises and lights screaming on every page, 3. cleared the way for intrusive obnoxious advertising, 4. opened up a whole new mess of security vulnerabilities. The internet wouldn't have been more boring without flash, they just would have been more focused on actually providing content in pages instead of blinking jumping crap and animated buttons. As far as those that were drawn to the internet by flashing blinking screaming things, do you really want to talk to those people, I'm known for unfriending at the first stupid chain foward etc...
I don't want a dedicated app for every website.
I see you've never used an iOS device.
Seriously, the HTML5 video tag works - just start using it. The problem here is of course dynamic streaming (and a few other things) but the thing is Flash can stream mp4 files just fine - internally it's the same stuff with just the flv container being different. Transcode your video into mp4, if Flash loads play it in Flash (or even better give the user an option), otherwise use an HTML5 fallback. If both of those cases fail direct your users to download a browser that doesn't suck or something.
Oh, and the whole process I just outlined is something you can do easily with a variety of libraries and modules, just search for it. Oh, and cut out the whole trying to stop people from downloading video by wrapping it in 8 different concentric SWF interface wrappers - if you don't want someone downloading your video then don't put it on your website in the first place.
This should mean that iOS devices will get much of the advantages of Flash video support, ...
And what are those advantages, actually? As far as I can tell, the "advantage" is mainly to content producers who haven't updated their skill sets since around 2002. And these tools cost a pretty penny.
Seriously, why bother? This probably isn't going to work for those Flash ads that seem to be 90% of the Flash usage on the web (no loss there!); and for video you can simply encode in h.264 and tell the Flash plugin to pretend it's Flash video for those browsers that can't handle h.264 (Firefox, IE 8, Chrome if Google ever actually follows through). With the proliferation of Android and iOS devices that do h.264 quite nicely, I'd think it's smarter to go that route - which is basically the opposite of the one Adobe is trying to sell here.
#DeleteChrome
Great intro topic; lets see if we can order them:
1. Leaving your machine open to all sorts of opportunistic malware.
2. Attempting to see how much heat your machine can actually generate [ bonus points for 'while actually doing nothing ' ]
3. Bringing a really crappy experience to a larger audience.
I was working for Sun (now Snoracle) when they way dissed the macromedia/flash experience. As an employee, I thought they were being little shits since it got in the way of experiencing the really slow alternative Java offered.
Over time, I agree with Jobs' 'flash is shit' stance. In my office, there are 5 macs, and the only time there is a problem with a machine, it tracks to some stupid flash app. Well, not really, once it was a dead hard drive, but the rotten million don't get to spoil it for the good few.
Adobe knows it is crap, but that isn't going to stop them.
Sure they will run, but if they require keyboard presses how do you control them?
What if they require a cursor hover...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Flash video maybe, that's about it. The rest of it was just worthless shit and skipintros that nobody thought was cool for more than 3 seconds aside from the person who came up with the dumb idea.
Q: But how does that app render so fast?
A: It doesn't use Flash
I shit you not.
And something else would have all the problems with exploits. Flash was targeted for the same reason Internet Explorer *used* to be targeted--because its the largest common denominator. It's the single piece of software that more people than any other on the internet have installed on their machine. If you target a specific browser, you can only get a fraction of the people, but if you find a flash exploit you can get them all. So if you're going to spend your time finding exploits for one or the other, it makes sense to target Flash.
That doesn't necessarily excuse them for all the problems they've had, but its highly likely that anybody else would have had just as many problems discovered if they were was ubiquitous. Internet explorer didn't suddenly get way more secure, it just stopped being targeted as often (to be fair, Microsoft has made huge strides with security as well, so it was some of both).
Erm, I meant that the other way around. Serving Flash to devices that support it, and non-flash video to those who don't. In other words, Adobe's own server software doing exactly what you suggest it should do.
And what are those advantages, actually? As far as I can tell, the "advantage" is mainly to content producers who haven't updated their skill sets since around 2002. And these tools cost a pretty penny.
The advantage is that HTML5 video tags do not support anything with DRM, and sadly there are many content producers who will not allow their content to be available without DRM. As a result, there is always going to be video content exclusive to Flash that iOS devices miss out on. I don't actually know how Adobe expects to get around there here (since they are effectively serving up HTML5 video in h.264), but I suspect sites that are concerned about DRM simply won't use this feature.
P.S. I need to go to sleep.
I'm starting to shake, just thinking about all the shitty video streaming solutions I've seen in my life. As much as I hate sites built in Flash, the world is a better place since its adoption for video delivery.
...Buffering...
DOWNLOAD WIZBANGWHUTZIT.COM'S VIDEO VIEWER BROWSER PLUGIN SUITE NOW!
Enjoy the new BHO's while waiting for your crappy 12 second video, that's going to look like a muddy stained glass window.
Will it let me play flash games on the wife's stupid iPhone?
On the iPhone you're screwed, but if you really want to play Flash games on an iPad you can use iSwifter.
Just like yo mama?
But I like that they are a disruptive force in the industry. They force change in others - sometimes for the good. I think its healthy when entrenched companies are forced to change their ways. Firefox/Chrome with IE, etc. I predict that if/when Windows goes 50% market share that we'll start seeing some interesting changes in microsoft.
Link leads to Goatse
The number of exploits has very little to do with how ubiquitous the software is (although that does change how hard people look for exploits), but far more to do with whether security was designed in or just some after-thought.
Modern internet explorer is far more secure than the old IE6 debacle and the reason that flash and acrobat reader have so many exploits is due to Adobe not caring overly much about security.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Fuck you too. Regards, comics hero & Greek island.
Just as Flash can require a hover, HTML can also require a hover. Otherwise, why would the HTML DOM have the mouseover event and CSS have the :hover pseudoclass? It's a question not of the technology but of what navigation style the developer chose.
And all that is exactly what HTML5 does. Only you now don't even have a convenient way to block it anymore.
So many sites trying that kind of thing would be so much better serving users simplifying the site into something that would work with DHTML, never mind HTML5 and canvas stuff...
Let me know when Strong Bad Emails play in an HTML environment with usable performance.
Fuck games, if the game developer want his game out on iOS device he have to do it the right way: make an app.
In other words, Apple just wants the $649 to put a Mac mini on each developer's KVM switch plus $99 per year from each developer, and it also wants to waste developers' time to rewrite the game from scratch in Objective-C.
Video using a compressed pixels codec can be taken care of with HTML5. How can vector animations (e.g. Homestar Runner) be taken care of? Converting an SWF animation to H.264 bloats it by a factor of ten or more in my tests, which makes a 2 GB/mo plan feel like it's 200 MB/mo.
Apart from Flash video and Flash games, there is a third category of vector animations, which I covered in this comment.
Transcode your video into mp4
Convert vector animation to compressed pixels and it'll become ten times bigger. See this comment.
if you don't want someone downloading your video then don't put it on your website in the first place.
Then how would you recommend that the publisher of a video provide an electronic service with a revenue structure similar to video rental?
As a result, there is always going to be video content exclusive to Flash that iOS devices miss out on.
Then why don't video producers license their works directly to Apple for iTunes rental?
for video you can simply encode in h.264
I mentioned a drawback of that in another comment.
It's been expanded so far beyond it's original remit that it's almost become an OS within the OS.
The problem is that developing an OS is a lot harder than developing apps, and (perhaps with the exception of scrotoplop) Adobe can barely do the latter.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You know those people you're complaining about? Hate to break it to you, but you're one of them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Depends. Writing a plugin that lets you play back streamed video and is relatively secure is a lot easier than writing a secure plugin that is basically a complete VM, graphics toolkit, video player, and so on. It's a question of attack surface.
Part of the problem with HTML5 is that it now has most of the capabilities of Flash (people focus on the video, but it also has - via canvas and SVG - both immediate and retained mode 2D PDF-like drawing capabilities, sound playback, image and video compositing, location APIs, and so on). This means that the attack surface is huge.
Ten years ago, the web was evolving in the direction of web services. Every side would provide information in some machine-parseable XML format. For example, if you wanted to pick a flight, you'd run an app that would grab flight data from all of the relevant airlines, filter, and sort it for you. Now, largely as a result of Google's manipulation, this has been subverted so each airline tries to provide a web application for browsing flights, rather than providing you with the data. Because this is so useless, you instead visit a comparison site (which takes a cut of the booking price and gives Google ad money and shows Google ads) that, again, has its own web app that lets you do the comparison.
This is inherently less secure, because now you're getting code from untrusted locations, rather than just data. As the web apps become more capable, the browser is exposing a larger and larger subset of the operating systems' capabilities and your exploit potential becomes larger.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
People seem to forget that every time. It's also one of the reasons why HTML5 video will never replace Flash completely.
I think people forget it because video is Flash's "killer app". Sure, there are Flash ads and Flash games - heck, there are even real Flash applications - but there is a reason that Apple includes a YouTube app on their phones and tablets that don't support Flash. No Flash was not a big deal, but no YouTube would have been a deal-killer for a lot of potential customers.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Eh, back before Youtube was big, some people used to use Flash for animations(like cartoons, not gif's), and then use Flash to display it. These days, you might still use Flash to create it, but then usually it gets rendered to video before being distributed.
G: You know what that problem is? ....
M: Ah, your adaptors can't overcome the band width limitation of wireless hand helds
G: That's right. Data takes too long to download so your image get so..
M: Image, ah, goes fuzzy
G: - Fussy, yeah, - Ha ha
G: Well, I haven't been alde to sleep all week. Thinkings about the push mechanism in handler. And then it just came to me. It's in the wrong place.
M: - The wrong place. - Yeah
G: The answer is not in the box. It's in the band.
"Flash 1. caused pages to contain far more worthless noise makers, longer loading times, and stop focusing so much on including content etc..."
Say hello to <marquee> <blink> and
<embed SRC="annoying_crap.wav" loop="true" autostart="true" hidden="true" >
I would advise a "pay per download" model instead
So instead of charging $1 for the privilege to view something for 24 hours, you want video producers to only be allowed to charge $20 for the privilege to view something for the indefinite future. The rental market consists of those home users willing to pay the former and not the latter. This appears to be a sizable market; otherwise, Redbox and Netflix wouldn't be profitable.
Yes, it would still be better than Flash. Thanks.
If I was about to lose a massive amount of market share, I'd reverse-engineer my platform too.
Because the only information you ever provide is that Apple can do no wrong
Actually that is entirely untrue, I've called them out before for bogus patent use and other issues (like a printer system that has never been as good as Windows, not even close).
And it's not just Apple I support, but any well designed technology or language from any company (hence my jumping in to stories about Lisp or Emacs). I've even praised Android on a number of points (like the notification system which they got right from the start [though WebOS was even better]).
Just between you and me, how much does Apple pay you, anyway
Much less than Google Black Ops pays you, in fact the answer is the same null set. I mean, I operate out in the open, you can tell I am merely an average developer and have been posting for many years - looking at history you can plainly see a slow migration from Java to iOS developer.
Yet you, you we know nothing of... so it seems far more likely that if anyone were to be paid, it would be yourself. After all, you reveal not even a user name to be tracked. Very easy for a company to slip you something now and again to keep pressure on pro-iOS posters, and in fact that's all you ever do... the MO of someone misbehaving is so often for them to accuse others of something they do themselves, as it's what they feel the most guilty of. So we can assume you are probably paid in some way because of the slant of your attacks, instead of simply being some bitter post-Nokia developer angry at the world about the loss of MeeGo (now that was doomed from the start).
This is the last response you'll see from me, since lesser minds such as yourself simply repeat inane "facts" they have grabbed onto like an infant with a rattle, and thus there's nothing more to be gained from responding to you. I simply had to point out how flawed your arguments were so your paymasters might direct your efforts to targets where your impact might be greater than...
Zero.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A week away from the RIM earning call, and you are spouting about the ability of the iPhone to use flash.
I swear the lot of you are barely classified as functionally retarded, and don't realized when you are being used.
This article should have been tossed in the bin.
Twats.
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
This sounds like the best complaint against flash ever.
If that's your argument you can just as easily substitute 'flash' with 'HTML5'.
No. He just wants to have a flash player that is separate from the browser, that plays those movies.
That would be AIR. But Apple won't even allow a generic AIR player onto its platform.