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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."
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.
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.
Thanks, I was about to say something similar but you beat me to it.
Every single "multimedia experience" I've encountered on the Internet since day-one has been a sucktacular piece of shit. Flash is one of the leading reasons for that, but the whole concept of using a web browser to deliver "multimedia experiences" is idiotic, and every implementation I've seen has been a sad, buggy, bandwidth and CPU hogging joke.
Browsers. Aren't. Built. For. That.
No "plugin" will fix it.
Use a dedicated app, fools.
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.
Lately, I've been absolutely amazed at the amount of detail Flash games have gotten... my girlfriend plays Facebook games every now and then, and things like The Sims actually look better than their standalone counterparts - full screen native res and everything.
The games peg the CPU, of course, but hey, it's smooth ;)
Video playback, when it works, is also alright. Youtube's implementation works well... others... meh, often not so much. It even works well on my smartphone, so watching TV/Movies off of streaming sites at the gym is a favorite...
Now "Flash multimedia experiences" (i.e. Flash web sites) on the other hand, are atrocious - that's something that just absolutely needs to go away - but those seem to be limited to private sites and maybe just a few businesses these days (like restaurants... what is it with restaurants and Flash?). If these go away completely and the rest stays the way it is (OK, maybe a bit better hardware acceleration for the games, so the CPU doesn't need to work as much), I'll be more or less satisfied with my experience - on a year-old smartphone and a 3-year-old subnotebook, no less!
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.
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.
Use a dedicated app, fools.
Would you want to have to download and install an app for Homestar Runner, an app for Weebl and Bob, a separate app for every single video or game uploaded to Newgrounds, etc.? And would you want to have to buy a copy of Windows to run those apps?