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How Adobe Flash Lost Its Way
snydeq writes "Despite early successes on the Web, the latter years of Flash have been a tale of missed opportunities, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister. 'The bigger picture — which I've touched on before — is that major platform vendors are increasingly encouraging developers to create rich applications not to be delivered via the browser, but as native, platform-based apps. That's long been the case on iOS and other smartphone platforms, and now it's starting to be the norm on Windows. Each step of the way, Adobe is getting left behind,' McAllister writes. 'Perhaps Adobe's biggest problem, however, is that it's something of a relic as developer-oriented vendors go. How many people have access to the Flash runtime is almost a moot point, because Adobe doesn't make any money from the runtime directly; it gives it away for free. Adobe makes its money from selling developer tools. Given the rich supply of free, open source developer tools available today, vendors like that are few and far between. Remember Borland? Or Watcom?'"
major platform vendors are increasingly encouraging developers to create rich applications not to be delivered via the browser, but as native, platform-based apps.
Really? Who? Where? and will it run on the cloud?
Closed, proprietary, full of security holes, resource hungry, used by marketers to deliver enhanced annoyance to users.
The Internet was waiting for a replacement to come along.
Flash was living on borrowed time because of those who had an opinion most saw it as a necessary evil instead of a wonderful platform.
...but a variation on this: http://catb.org/jargon/html/W/wheel-of-reincarnation.html
Let's build native apps! Nah, it sucks, let's make it multiplatform! Nah, it sucks, let's create platform-specific extensions! Nah, those suck, let's build it on the Web! Nah, it sucks, let's lock the functionality into the browser! Nah, let's make a rich content platform of HTML5! Nah, it sucks, let's go back to native apps!
Flash failed because it was proprietary. End of story. The web is no place for closed technologies.
Assumes that it knew it's way at some point.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
So wait, now we're NOT writing rich applications to be delivered by the browser and instead focusing on native, platform-based apps? I thought that was EXACTLY what we were getting away from. The only 'platform' apps are iPhone and Android mobile apps due to the screen real estate available, even a tablet has the size and responsiveness to work fine with web based apps. Oh wait, a Windows 8 article, that explains it... this is just Microsoft PR being propped up on the backs of mobile interfaces.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Of a few bucks.
XCode for IPhone development is free. But you need a developer license to publish which is a bit more expensive.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
They should've focused more on the security and less on the marketing of flash. Who knows what might've happened if they jumped on the browser bus and created their own...
Any replacement(s) will be shitty, too. It won't matter who creates them, or how they're implemented. They will be shitty. That's just the nature of any attempt to have the browser host remotely complex applications. The browser is merely a document viewer and navigator; it is not an operating system of some sort. It will always fail as an operating system or an application host.
Go back to when this idea of having the browser host applications first took off. JavaScript is one of the biggest blunders of all time. It wasn't just shitty when it was introduced in the mid-1990s, it was seen as absolutely abysmal and unacceptable by basically all developers at the time. These were developers who had used real languages like C, C++, Smalltalk, and Perl. They knew shitty when they saw it, and they refused to use it. That's why JavaScript went basically untouched for a decade, until those developers had retired or moved on to other endeavors. It's only been deemed "acceptable" by a much younger and more inexperienced generation of programmers, many of which haven't used any other programming language (with the exception of perhaps PHP, the next worst language ever implemented and widely used), and thus don't realize how horrible JavaScript is.
The other technologies that followed the initial JavaScript attempt have been shitty, too. Java applets, ActiveX controls, Flash, and now JavaScript again with the latest and ever-changing-not-to-be-standardized-until-2022-or-later HTML5 nonsense, have all offered horrible experiences and nothing but problems for users, system administrators and network administrators alike. Google's Native Client effort will likely be just as horrid in the long run, although their work does seem marginally more competent than, say, all of the JavaScript work ever done.
The end result is that the browser should not be used for anything more than displaying and linking documents. Real functionality should be implemented via a native application. If more than one platform needs to be targeted, use a truly portable programming language like Python, or do the right thing and create separate implementations for each platform.
The early years of the internet were plagued with issues on how Flash was used: long Flash intro's to websites, and Flash menu's that would take ages to animate each and every time you clicked on it to name but a couple. But it was also plagued with a vast number of file formats fighting to be the internet streaming app of choice; Media Player, Real Player, Quicktime etc. Some of which were on some platforms but not others; all of which sucked up resources just to play a video on a website. Flash solved this online video problem; a single method for which to deliver streaming media content. A single app that was super easy to install for even the most casual of users. The success of YouTube meant Flash has it's lifeline, and became useful (for me). It's not the perfect solution, and moving into HTML 5 era it will become redundant once more; but it did fill a much needed gap.
Moreover, the problem does not lie completely with *nix developers themselves. Case in point, it takes them months to fix their broken calls to memcpy which were:
traced to Adobe Flash by maintainers of glibc at Red Hat, Linus Torvalds and others.
Full story here.
Relevant part of the conversation:
Never trust a spiritual leader who cannot dance -- Mr. Miyagi
IIRC Apple explicitly didn't want native apps when it released the iPhone. Their original idea was to have everything web based and accessed through Safari. A lot of time and effort was put into making this work. Native apps, and the app store, only surfaced with the 2nd revision of iOS and after people had been jail-breaking their phones to be able to install native apps. Android had to allow native apps because iOS did. This drive to native apps was from the users not from the manufacturers. The whole summary is a massive rewrite of history to fit the author's viewpoint.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
XCode for IPhone development is free ...as long as you already have a Mac running a sufficiently-recent release of OS X.
Otherwise, not free.
Kid-proof tablet..
Add to all that the fact that Flash is only marginally functional on Linux desktops, either demanding reinstallation every time or claiming that it is not installed when it is. I long since lost interest in what is basically a dead platform.
$99 / yr. Not terribly expensive.
"Given the rich supply of free, open source developer tools available today, vendors like that are few and far between. Remember Borland? Or Watcom?'"
This part of the argument seems a little questionable. Yes, the OSS tools scene has grown and improved by considerable measure, which probably did help to murder some of the more indie and niche players(OSS has a somewhat mixed record in toppling incumbents; but it tends to sharply reduce the demand for '2nd best; but cheaper' and 'scrappy underdog with rough edges but only $99!' players...); but it seems to both ignore the elephant in the room and miss the point:
Those vendors who make their money on selling their platforms generally decided(for some mixture of direct profit, the desire to increase the value of their platform by making targeting it easier, or desire to increase their control of the platform by being able to change it radically and get away with it by changing the dev tools to compensate) to get into the market for dev tools for their platform. That really didn't do the 3rd parties any favors.
As for missing the point, Adobe is actually a powerhouse in the world of designers-of-tools-for-platforms-they-don't-also-sell: it's just in the area of even being a competent deliverer-of-platform that they've pretty consistently sucked. Their design tools continue to move pretty briskly; but everybody loathes the issues of flash player(especially once you get beyond win32 with a beefy processor), acrobat reader, etc.
I think flash was bought by adobe to keep control until the ris of flash could not harm them any more. Adobes core business are WYSIWYG Document systems, pdf creation, management and form server tools. There is no other integrated product suite like Adobes. You can design an excellent looking printable document which integrates well with online services.
IMHO Adobe buying flash was good for nothing else but preventing flash from becoming relevant in managing online form data.
IMHO, Flash lost its way when they added video support to it (around the time that Adobe bought Macromedia, as I recall). Before that, Flash was all about the vectors. (You could import bitmaps into it too, but they wouldn't scale well, so those were best used just for static background elements.) It was a way to do animation without pushing full pre-rendered frames down to the client: just describe the shapes then tell the player how to manipulate them. It provided a toolset to produce rich user interfaces that you couldn't even hope to dream of doing with (incompatible implementations of) HTML3 and Javascript, and even HTML4 with CSS can't pull off the same stuff today. The Flash plugin was a lean and efficient client, and close enough to being ubiquitous. Then they tacked video support onto it (which was all about pushing pre-rendered frames down to the client), and it became a video-player plugin (with vector support). The fact that people talk today about replacing Flash with a video codec shows how completely that added feature usurped the original functionality.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
No they don't, they charge to publish on the marketplace. You don't HAVE to publish through the marketplace. The tools are free.
I think the point is that the same technologies can be used to make desktop applications
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
They are still around: OpenWatcom.
Wow, this article is so full of misinformation...
"major platform vendors are increasingly encouraging developers to create rich applications not to be delivered via the browser, but as native, platform-based apps"
Adobe Flash can build both native iOS and Android apps today. Many of the top games in both the iTunes App store and Android Market are made with Flash.
"Perhaps Adobe's biggest problem, however, is that it's something of a relic as developer-oriented vendors go. How many people have access to the Flash runtime is almost a moot point, because Adobe doesn't make any money from the runtime directly; it gives it away for free. Adobe makes its money from selling developer tools. Given the rich supply of free, open source developer tools available today, vendors like that are few and far between. Remember Borland? Or Watcom?'"
Adobe Flash Builder is a plug-in to Eclipse! And Adobe's implementation of Flash Builder in Eclipse is one of the best plug-ins I've ever used. It's well featured, has lots of support and documentation, and works well on multiple platforms.
A proprietary app wrapper works even when the device is not connected to the Internet because the HTML and JavaScript files are stored on the device, not transmitted on demand from the Internet. Or can users of popular devices force specific web applications to be cached?
The Flex SDK is completely free and open source.
Puzzle Daze is now my job
Browser-based apps can be stored on the device
Until the application runs into severe limits that a device imposes on the size of the HTML5 application cache and HTML5 local storage.
and native apps can use network communication (especially when the device is always online anyway)
Phones are always online. Tablets aren't. The iPod touch, for instance, is a 3.5" tablet, and it's offline whenever the user isn't within the range of a Wi-Fi AP with a known password.
Why on earth would you run an app on a server half way around the world, when the device could easily do the work itself
There are applications for which one would need to synchronize with each transaction, such as anything related to order fulfillment. (But then I'm biased because order fulfillment web apps are my job.)
$99 / yr. Not terribly expensive.
That's $99 per year per platform. Want to work on Windows Phone 7? That's another $99 per year. And even if you stick to one platform, it's not inexpensive if you're a student, hobbyist, or anyone else who doesn't make money from his work. Notice the existence of a larger fraction of free apps on Android because developers don't feel they have to recover the $99 per year ante.
Adobe lost its way when it decided to do stuff other then photoshop.
Adobe lost its way when they took a great new file format (pdf) and tried to add
so much more execution (javascript for one) inside, when all it needed to be was
a copyright protected document with no way to normally alter it.....
Adobe lost its way when ti came out with flash.
Adobe lost its way when they tried to deny their apps were faulty, and that
it was normal to find a 10 zero day exploits a week in your product.
First FA
Second FA
(Third FA is a Slashdot link, so no need to provide more).
Discussion System prefs link: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm
Part of why Adobe is struggling with Flash is its sense of entitlement.
The company believes not just that Flash is a good idea, but that you *must* adopt Flash. As-is. Without question. No matter how much it slows down your device, how it hurts battery life, how it affects the stability of whatever browser you're using (I know it's not nightmarish, but it's far from perfect). Oh, if you're making an Android phone, could you please make Flash a core part of any marketing you do, no matter how much it actually matters? Thanks!
And if you dare to omit Flash like Apple (and now Microsoft, partly), then you're an evil commie dictator who hates freedom and life itself. Just look at how John Dowdell and others from Adobe react to Apple, or how Android phone and tablet makers are practically forced to parrot Adobe's line of how you're not getting the "full web" unless you use their third-party plugin. Never mind that HTML5 lets me AirPlay a video to my TV where you can't do that with a Flash video on any other platform.
This wouldn't be a problem except that Adobe hasn't really addressed many of the underlying problems, and I'm not sure if it entirely can. Hardware acceleration is good, but when a Galaxy S II or an Optimus Pad (both dual-core devices) can still choke on a moderately sized piece of Flash, that's a problem. It's also still very common to hear of Flash crashing things or of security holes specific to it... when Apple, Google, and Mozilla design sandboxing code specifically because of the problems your plugin creates, that should tell you that you're doing something wrong.
Oh no!! Flash is getting kicked to the curb. What will they ever do?
--I'm not talking about dance lessons. I'm talking about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield.-
"Despite early successes on the Web, the latter years of Flash have been a tale of missed opportunities,
Not surprising, when the Next Big Things are smartphones and tablets, and - of the two leading platforms - iOS refuses to support Flash at all, and Android has very patchy support (I recently did an unscientific test in Best Buy and although several of the Android tablets claimed to support Flash, only the Xoom actually opened my Flash applet).
One of the key lessons from failure of the original windows "tablet" PCs, the failure of the original EEE PC "Netbook" concept (subsequent "netbooks" have been more and more like entry-level laptops) and the rise of the iDevices has been that phones and tablets need custom-designed software that matches the native UI. That's why Microsoft hasn't been able to Borg the mobile market: the killer apps (Office/Outlook) which help it to dominate the desktop (on PC and Mac) are worthless on mobiles without a ground-up rewrite. Flash has a similar problem: even if your tablet does run Flash, many "legacy" Flash apps just won't work with a touch interface or, if they do, are too fiddly to operate on a tiny screen.
However, "HTML5" (i.e. all, some or fewer of HTML5/CSS3/ECMAScript/DOM/SVG/WebGL/whatever) is only just approaching maturity - so there could be a move back from native Apps to webapps (given they can be made almost indistinguishable from Native on iOS/Android). Amazon have already produced a webapp version of the Kindle reader (to get around Apple's rules on in-app sales).
Flash player itself is probably on the way out - for better or worse "HTML5" will probably take over, especially with Microsoft taking that road with Win 8. However, Adobe has a great opportunity: there's a great gap in the market for something like Flash Professional which can "publish" to HTML5, or even iOS/Android native code. It may not be the programmer's choice, but for certain types of app (e.g. relatively simple educational applets, or casual games) its a killer. Flash player dying doesn't have to hurt Adobe much.
Not that I'm a huge fan of Adobe's current bloatware offerings, but I don't currently see anything like Flash for HTML5 applet authoring...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Actually, Borland's tools (Delphi, C++ Builder, etc.) are still there and they have just released a new version that allows development for Windows (32- and 64-bit, finally), OSX, and iOS. Called Firemonkey, it looks pretty exciting. Android targetting is promised soon.
Or Microsoft? They give their compilers away, but charge you for the IDE.
Wait...er, now they give away the IDE, too, but charge you for MFC.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Right now, you can create a cross-platform app that runs on Windows, Mac, browser, iOS, Android, and the Blackberry Playbook using the Flex 4.5 sdk. They recently added the ability to use native extensions for Android and IOS. http://www.adobe.com/products/flex.html
Do you have any idea how much support it requires to maintain multiple OS installers for a python runtime, the binary libraries, and everything else? Don't you think users will complain that the python app has a totally different UI than their native one such as if you use WxWidgets, Qt, etc? Have you thought about what happens when you need to synchronize an application update between your front end and back end? And step users through downloading, disabling anti-virus, and reinstalling your application when its local files get corrupt because their disk filled up or they get a virus or they decide to clean the delete key on their keyboard (yes, this happens). If you target small businesses without their own in house IT staff (or an incompetent IT staff as is often the case), you need a full time support staff, a QA team stocked up with virtual machine instances of every PC and Mac OS released in the last 5-7 years, and all releases better undergo a few weeks of QA.
Your best bet in this situation is to deploy a VM image because then at least you only have to worry about bugs in a single package. Alternately, you can have them use remote desktop to a whole bunch of client interface servers, which is going to cost you quite a bit extra in hardware.
Or you can target a web browser using html and javascript. And as long as they've updated their browser some time in the last 5 years, your application has a high probability of just working. The browser has been well tested against the OS they're running because its used by lots of other people.
Also, I have never seen perl code give good performance, as its type model basically prevents useful compilation.
Yes, if you have an older version of OS X, the current version of Xcode will cost you $4.99.
lol and you think the marketers wont use the replacement to "used by marketers to deliver enhanced annoyance to users" And those who hate flash are blocking it as they will the next replacement.
Jack of all trades,master of none
native apps can use network communication (especially when the device is always online anyway).
Phones are always online
No, they are not. [rambles about batteries, data caps, and roaming charges]
I think Anonymous Coward's point is that a phone lets the user choose to turn on the cellular radio at any time, even while away from Wi-Fi coverage. Wi-Fi-only tablets don't let the user do that.
In modern browsers, any web site can cache application data and logic on a device so no internet access is needed.
Only up to 5 MB on certain popular devices, I've read.
Right here:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Clearly, the premises of the article are wrong.
P1: Flash sucks.
P2: Adobe has an outdated business model.
P3: Developers are abandoning Flash.
------
C: It's all Steve Jobs's fault.
Having been a long time /. reader, I know that the conclusion is supposed to be that it's all Steve Job's fault, but I'm having a hard time reaching that conclusion from the stated premises. Therefore, I conclude that the premises are wrong.
Oops, I already made a post. You're right, this is what I posted in case it gets buried:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
His letter turned the tide IMO. Even *I* tend to agree with his stance in the letter...
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Those are already all tied together by HTML5. That is how you make a single app to run everywhere. Native apps are the opposite, they are how you make an app to run just in one device. To exploit the specific features of that device.
I don't see how a camera is such a "specific feature" nowadays given that virtually all smartphones and many laptops have a camera. Using HTML5, how do I request the user's permission to access a device's camera and then subsequently access the camera?
Flash development is free. Completely and utterly open source and free. Google "Flex SDK" if you don't believe me.
Puzzle Daze is now my job
Android is a Linux.
I don't see how that's relevant. A DVR made by TiVo runs Linux, but it doesn't allow applications from small application vendors at all. That's one reason why some people refer to a "GNU/Linux" environment, as a system with many GNU components can't be Tivoized.
XCode is free, and there is a much larger fraction of free apps on Linux than on OSX, especially excluding darwinports/fink apps.
Someone is much more likely to own a machine capable of running GNU/Linux than a machine capable of (lawfully) running Mac OS X. This means that in a sense, XCode is $649 and comes with a free computer. You can code Linux apps on the Linux machine (or the dual-booting Windows machine) that you are much more likely to already own.
I just don't see the $99 as much of a disincentive. If I'm willing to donate days / weeks / months of my time why would $100 even be a question?
Some people have a lot more time than money. They may still be in school and rely on donations from their parents, for example. Or they may happen to have been born in a country that has an undervalued currency.
Many people dislike Flash because of how it is used. Mainly, heavy visual advertisements which replaced the far worse era of continous pop-up adds.
Very few who criticize Flash have ever used it to any great extent. They've never explored it's benefits for rich web applications or cross-platform usability.
Many view HTML5 as the death nail in Flash's coffin. And think Adobe is greatly concerned. As the article says, Adobe makes tools. They will just as gladly make developer IDEs for HTML5. In fact, it'd probably be economical cause they could cut a large number of empoyees in both the Flash player and ActionScript development teams.
But there is something that is TERRIFYING in regards to the death of Flash. While so many rejoice in Flash's suffering. They are blind to the real horror on the horizon. They shout "Give us Barrabus".
Why is Flash dying? What killed Flash? Apple's decision to refuse the software to run on it's computers. And now Microsoft is joining Apple by proclaiming the death of the plugin in Windows 8.
And Slashdotters cheer blindly "Open source! HTML5! Yea! Yea!" failing to realize that there is something MUCH more dangerous than a closed source proprietary runtime such as Adobe's Flash.
The fact that it is being killed by closed proprietary platforms. I find it ironic that Slashdotters will cheer the death of the proprietary Flash at the hands of Apple saying "You can not run the software of choice on your own computers." And will applaud Microsoft joining the bandwagon. And call this "good"?
Seriously, Microsoft saw that Apple didn't even get a wrist slap for it's anti-competitive behavior. So is it any wonder that Microsoft has announced no more plugins. No one else's software but ours. Sure, we'll gain an open standard that will likely be split and marred by three main compatriots (Apple, Microsoft & Google).
The result is that you are being told what you can or cannot run on your own machine. And as this blends increasingly more with the cloud (ie: Kindle Fire). We will start to lose ownership and control over our own computers. We'll be locked into proprietary systems.
Ironically, for all Flash's proprietary aspects, it was still very accessible to both users and developers. Yes, Flash has it's problems. But it also has it's strengths. But most of all - it was there.
It's not being killed by a "technical victory". HTML5 is not killing Flash. Rather large companies are deciding to close their platforms. To limit what you can run on them. And THAT is what's killing Flash.
THIS IS NOT PROGRESS, THIS IS REGRESS BACK TO 1984.
So... because they dedicated their product to a platform dedicated to displacing them with their own "flash" they have lost. I'm glad TFA expanded on that. He could have just written: If they would have gone full force at becoming cross platform with Linux and OSX flash would have become a popular cross development platform.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
used by marketers to deliver enhanced annoyance to users.
Honestly, I think this is the root of why people hate flash. Marketers use it to annoy users. But guess what? Any replacement technology is going to be immediately used by marketers to annoy users. That's what marketers do. If you think HTML5 is going to be a bucket of kittens, you've got another thing coming.
Flash is probably the best place to prototype 2d games, and get your hands dirty with programming that can actually have an interface. It is just the best tool out there for low, low end indie development. ActionScript can be finicky in odd ways, but it is also shockingly powerful and fast. And as much as I'm looking forward to HTML5 game development, the tools really aren't there yet.
The best complaint that can be lobbed at Flash is that it hasn't changed functionality in years. It hasn't gotten more powerful, or more networked, etc. A symmetrical simultaneous networked Flash session handled in-engine, for example, would be massively useful. And now that there is competition, maybe things like that will happen.
Or maybe Adobe will forget it and move on, like they have with Dreamweaver.
The ______ Agenda
The premises are right, but it is Adobe's fault. How could it by anyone else's? Flash is their 100% proprietary platform. They and only they are responsible.
The end of Flash is only Steve Jobs' fault to the extent that the guy who stood up to Joe McCarthy and said "at long last sir, have you no shame?" is responsible for the end of McCarthyism. Everybody was thinking it, and somebody had the guts to say it, and the air went out of the balloon. But if it wasn't them who said it, somebody else would. They had both already overstayed their welcome.
The same thing is going to happen with other Adobe products, because they bought their only competitor and their software quality crashed, it is abysmal. There are incredible bugs in Creative Suite that never get fixed, and each new version adds more bugs. I have worked for years as a Photoshop pro, I know it inside out, but I no longer love it. It's not lovable anymore. It's barely tolerable. When someone else provides a solution, Adobe's users will flock to it, and Adobe management will blame everybody but themselves.
Ericsson had done so in 2010:
https://labs.ericsson.com/developer-community/blog/beyond-html5-implementing-device-and-stream-management-webkit
The "Device API" however has been replaced with "Video conferencing and peer-to-peer communication":
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/complete/video-conferencing-and-peer-to-peer-communication.html#introduction-10
I'm not aware of anyone that supports it currently.
New things are always on the horizon
This brings up an opportunity that might kinda be interesting.
The latest release of OS X has changed so that you're allowed to run it in a VM, as long as the underlying hardware is Apple. A given box can run three copies of Lion at once (the base OS, and two in VMs).
I'm wondering who will be the first to set up cloud-based access to XCode using something like the VMWare Viewer as the client. Register with the site, get your own Lion VM provisioned, and launch the individual VMs on demand as individual developers connect in.
This wasn't permitted by the licensing in a cost-effective way under 10.6. From what I can see, it is under 10.7. I wonder if anyone will try it.
Well that should be pretty easy to predict: Adobe will drop Flash, why do you think they are building/releasing HTML5 IDE/authoring applications ? They even created a Flash-to-HTML5-conversion tool.
Apple does not support Flash on their iOS-devices and Microsoft won't support any plugins for using with their touch-optimised interface Metro.
New things are always on the horizon
Suppose Adobe made Flash open source, along with its dev tools. Would then Flash be a viable alternative for rich internet applications?
If I was Adobe, I'd certainly open Flash up: there is nothing worst for Microsoft, Apple, Google and others at this time than a vendor that has over 90% market penetration to open source its tools.
Adobe hasn't been able to port flash to new devices fast enough, and proprietary operating system vendors have figured out that using multiplatform tools makes it easier for users to leave. There's no good reason for Apple or Microsoft to let Adobe devalue their platforms.
-- Mike
Everybody here hates flash.
You know I've been reading flash is dead stories for couple years here.
Still it is up and running, and new versions are coming out. And if somebody needs
site that needs to look exactly the same on all browsers and all OSes, while
having rich content with animation video and sound, they stake is usually on flash.
because HTML5 is not ready yet, and never will be, because big companies
does not know how to come to one standard. that means you will have to write
custom cases for each different browser. good luck.
How do you publish simple javascript game so that it can be embedded in any page?
I bet its 10x complex task than adding one flash object.
yes, I am flash game developer, and i have android phone with flash, not an iOS device.
Yes, but device type != platform, at least the way I read it.
To clarify, the "right thing" according to me would be to develop a "phone" UI that works on both Android phones and iPhones; a "tablet" UI that works on Android tablets and iPads; a "desktop UI" that works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, etc. Contrast with a different implementation for each platform, which I took to mean one UI for iOS phones, one UI for Android phones, etc.
The reality is that a different UI is probably needed for each non-desktop OS/device type pair, due to market fragmentation and lack of open standards. But that's far from a desirable state of affairs.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
The existence of a well-polished SDK 1 year after iPhone launch isn't proof that they were planning on 3rd party apps all along--obviously they had to write apps internally which means they would have had much of the SDK put together even if just for internal development.
I personally think that Apple planned to have some number of 3rd party apps from large sophisticated customers (like the Google Maps and Youtube apps they had at launch), and they were genuinely hoping that Web apps would cover pretty much everybody else. If you put yourself back in 2007 then that's what made sense, because many analysts thought it would be a stretch for Apple to ever sell 1 million phones--which arguably wouldn't support much of an app ecosystem. Also, processing power and memory were genuine limiters then.
You cast this as some sort of malicious bait and switch and I just don't see it. I think even now Apple would be happy if half of the App Store apps were instead made available as HTML 5 web pages, and they have been doing everything possible to enable that path.
it was the market that demanded native apps, Apple has been diligently pursuing the HTML5 path to provide as close to a native experience as possible for Web apps.
It's amazing to me all these people that are just sure they know what was going on in Steve Jobs' head in 2007--all possible evidence to the contrary.
That's fine, but why do you hang out on a technology web site?
Apple strongly supports HTML5 (and HTML5 is quickly acquiring all of Flash's capabilities) as a means of writing un-curated apps for iOS devices. There is no regression back to anything. All Apple wants is that the Apps which run on their platform won't destroy battery life, steal data, crash, or otherwise annoy their customers. This can be done by writing curated native apps or by working within industry standard protocols for uncurated web apps. Seems pretty simple to me. But then again, I understand how computers work and you don't.
"The bigger picture -- which I've touched on before -- is that major platform vendors are increasingly encouraging developers to create rich applications not to be delivered via the browser, but as native, platform-based apps. That's long been the case on iOS and other smartphone platforms, and now it's starting to be the norm on Windows." In the future will everything be in the browser or will everything be an app? Which is it??
Why would you do this? You can just as easily write the code on an old Mac and compile on a server. Apple has all kinds of great tools for using bad computers and fast servers for a compile so people can share.
If it is small just do it all on an old mac.
Adobe made this worse by selling Flash to advertisers and not offering controls like "disable this plugin". I agree that HTML5 will have the same problems. But... it is open which means browsers, that have no particular interest in marketing, will be implementing the balance between end users and advertisers.
As for Adobe dropping Flash... they likely will push the technology into other products. They still offer a great vector manipulation system.
The premises are right, but it is Adobe's fault. How could it by anyone else's? Flash is their 100% proprietary platform. They and only they are responsible.
You're trying to respond seriously to a troll who likes to post strawmans. No one wins in that circumstance!
So if I develop for Windows Microsoft gives me a free computer? Can I install Linux on it? Or should I just develop for Linux instead, and Linus will give me a free computer? Who gives out the best free computers?
What a crock comparing Flash to Watcom. Watcom was all about giving users precise control over compilation and linkage. The theme song for Flash was That's the way we like it, Uh-Huh Uh-Huh. (I never knew sexual grunts were proper nouns.)
The number one appeal of Flash to content developers was how little control Flash offered the user, if you foolishly crossed the installation chasm--the only user statistic you ever hear from the Flash camp.
What does Flash mean? Does not fade gracefully into your peripheral vision.
Watcom was brilliantly portable. Microsoft feasted on the dotcom bubble, during which time brilliantly portable was suspended as a development tool virtue long enough to extinguish a relatively tiny rival who was causing great technical embarrassment.
Around the same point in time, Flash energized on the brilliant business model that what the internet desperately needs to become is a 24/7 neon strip mall. Thanks for redecorating my lawn in the worst possible taste.
There were plenty type A software people out there who were determined to steal Flash's lunch money at the first opportunity, push it violently into a hallway locker, and leave it there until it starved to death.
Tell me that's a good long term business model.
Don't be silly iOS devices will replace all computers from netbooks that cost half as much and can do more to giant server farms. Just ask any fanboy.
Quite often however, someone comes along and says, "ooh, can I get this on my Mac/Linux box/iPad/Android device?"
Ooh, can I get this on my Windows Phone 7 device? Be careful: it can't run standard C++; it runs only languages that can be compiled to safe IL.
So what do I have to buy if I want to make a vector animation that plays in Flash Player, something like Homestar Runner or Weebl and Bob? Does Synfig export to SWF yet?
You would do this so you could rent access to the dev environment to people who don't have any access to any kind of Macintosh at all and don't want to obtain one. The business model of "XCode is on OnLive" is what I'm talking about.
I think the poster's point was that proprietary web access protocols are ultimately doomed.
iOS success in partly attributable to having a great, unfiltered, standards-compliant browser. In 2007 this was quite innovative on a mobile device.
How many people want to rent access to a mac and don't own or are unwilling to buy a cheap one? I have a hard time imagining an actual paying client.
Adobe doesn't really care if you're using Flash or not. They've now created a set of native html5 development tools. As long as you're using Adobe software to author your content, they don't give a toss if you're using flash or not.
Flash served an important purpose in serving up multimedia content over the web, when there was no real other widely accepted solution. Now that browsers can natively handle just about everything that Flash could do as a plugin, whether or not it continues to be used isn't really the issue.
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Quite often however, someone comes along and says, "ooh, can I get this on my Mac/Linux box/iPad/Android device?"
Ooh, can I get this on my Windows Phone 7 device? Be careful: it can't run standard C++; it runs only languages that can be compiled to safe IL.
Yep... irritating that. That said, in many cases, C# is what my original backend was all written in (like I said, the vast majority of my work is for Windows anyway), so WP7 isn't such a pain really...
In the rare cases where porting of the backend absolutely must happen for whatever reason, I try not to use too many "special tricks" of a language in my code, so theoretically porting of most projects is possible without too much pain... I do obviously prefer not to have to port all the backend when I can avoid it though.
Note that for most non Windows platforms, mono is my life-saver.
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HTML5 will replace Flash, not native applications.
In the rare cases where porting of the backend absolutely must happen for whatever reason, I try not to use too many "special tricks" of a language in my code
When you need to update the back-end, how do you make sure that the updates are applied across ports in all languages?
Note that for most non Windows platforms, mono is my life-saver.
Too bad Mono costs $400 for either iOS or Android or $650 for both (the last time I checked), putting it out of small-time developers' reach.
Windows Phone 7 not supporting C is a bit of a problem. Although for the market share, maybe it's not worth your effort.
Mostly I ask about Windows Phone 7 as an on-topic proxy for the Xbox 360 console. Like applications for Windows Phone 7, Xbox Live Indie Games can use only .NET languages. Anything that applies to porting application logic to Windows Phone 7 would also apply to porting game logic to Xbox 360.
The decision comes down to that always faced by a person or company who wants to support multiple platforms: make one or more of them a crappy experience, or put in the effort to do it properly on each one.
By "experience" do you just mean user interface? Having defects in the application logic on one or more platforms due to the added cost also leads to "a crappy experience". For example, I don't want a character to be able to make a jump on the Mac and Linux versions of a video game but not on the Xbox 360 version or vice versa due to a mistake in the translation of the physics to C#.
Which allows you to pop up a message saying "would you like to increase it ?"
How far do these "would you like to increase it" prompts go on popular mobile devices? Does the user have to tap OK ten times to add 10 MB?
A robot can be given login details if desired.
However, I consider the practice of requiring CAPTCHAs as a part of normal login to be evil though.
How else would you implement a site that is free to humans but paywalled to robots, such as certain TV listing sites? The advertisers that pay for the hosting and the gathering of the information on the site will want to exclude robots from impression counts becuase robots aren't influenced by advertisements.
Apple controls the Javascript engine on their platform and their hardware will be designed to be power efficient for typical Javascript/HTML5 code (efficient video rendering, etc.). They also influence the standards process so they can steer things in a more battery-friendly direction.
They aren't at the mercy of a poorly supported 3rd party binary with whatever algorithms Adobe wants to use, and poor support for dedicated platform-specific hardware accelerators.
Now I'm certain that you don't understand computers.
No.
If you develop for Windows, you can buy any of a wide array of computers to do the work, from a large number of different manufacturers -- including Apple. You can even build one yourself using common parts that meet industry-standard specifications like ATX.
If you want to develop for an iPhone, you have to have a Mac. Not a Dell, not something you hobbled together with interchangable bits, but an actual Mac.
Kid-proof tablet..
If you want to develop for Windows, you need to have Windows. Huh.
Seriously, who cares? If you're serious about development you're not going to bother hacking something together anyway. If you're a hobbyist and really, really don't want to buy a Mac then use the gcc toolchain and develop on a Mac, Windows or Linux.
The point is that this "you need a Mac to develop for iPhone!11!" is stupid. You need a computer to develop for any mobile platform.
I care because I don't have a Mac. I do have a bunch of PCs which I can do almost anything else with, though...
There is a plain and definite difference between "needing a computer" and "needing a computer from a specific manufacturer." If you can't detect that difference, then there's really no hope for you.
Kid-proof tablet..
If you want to program a windows phone you're going to need an OS from "a specific manufacturer."
And again, if you're making a serious app then buying a computer to develop it on is something you're probably going to do anyway. Otherwise jailbreak and use your current hardware to your heart's content.
Oh, and I bet all your machines (or at least the ones you can actually write anything for a major smartphone on) all have processors from one of two manufacturers. Guess you need specific hardware too hey? As an owner of a SPARC based machine I'm highly offended!
And I can run that specific OS on commodity hardware. I don't have to use a computer that is built by Microsoft.
I like choices when buying hardware. While I believe that Apple produce very fine hardware indeed, I very much enjoy the freedom to choose other manufacturers. Today's box for developing a "serious app" is going to be tomorrow's box for tinkering with hardware, and I like tinkering with hardware and stretching my dollars as far as I can.
I've always tried to put my money into the underdog CPUs whenever possible, whether that be Cyrix/IBM (6x86MX), or even IDT, as long as they worked with common industry standard parts. There was a period in the early-mid 90's where DEC's Alpha had potential to be real and hackable alternative. It is very unfortunate that we currently only have two realistic choices.
Kid-proof tablet..