Adobe Ends Development of Flash On Mobile Browsers

larry bagina writes "Jason Perlow of ZDNet is reporting that Adobe will stop developing Flash for mobile browsers and focus on AIR and HTML5 tools. I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if 750 voices screamed out in terror and were laid off. But that noise was overshadowed by everybody else celebrating."

Comments

Shhh... Listen...

[Petersko]

My god... it's Steve Jobs laughing.

The Whole Web

[gwking]

But.. but... now how will I get the "whole web" experience?!

Rather Petty, Adobe...

[Petersko]

Can't believe they would actually hold out until it was certain Steve Jobs couldn't say, "I told you so!"

At last!

[Yvan256]

Mobile being the future of the Web, it should also means the end of Flash on the desktop in a few years. Nobody's going to waste money doing Flash for the desktop and HTML5 for the mobiles, especially when the desktops can already do HTML5 too.

Applications done in Flash but compiled to Adobe Air is okay, just don't trash the Web with the stupid plug-ins.

Next step: agreeing on a CODEC for the HTML5 videos*. That's gonna be a fun topic!

* doesn't the tag allow for two source files? If it doesn't, it should!

Re:At last!

[grumbel]

So long as you can get the absolute reference to the .flv you can download it,

That's why a lot of flash is streamed these days, so you don't have a flv that you can just grab out of your Temp folder. If you know a way to easily and quickly download content directly from say http://www.thedailyshow.com/, let me know, last time I looked, there wasn't any working one on Linux.

Add on to that the fact you can use FRAPS or most other Screen Recorders to capture the video should the stream be encrypted and it doesn't matter either way.

That's complicated and cumbersome, as it it forces you to not use your computer in the mean time or it will run the video. It also forces you to download in real-time, which is the very thing you normally would want to avoid with a download.

Flash is dominant in the video space because it got there first.

Flash wasn't the first, ActiveX and Quicktime where much earlier. Flash won because it was the best and could do things that no other thing could do at the time. Even today HTML5 is still far away from being a fully working Flash replacement. Remember, Flash isn't just video, it's also a pretty damn good game development platform and animation toolkit.

I fear that the only thing that will change with Flash gone is that webpages will switch to ever more obscure Javascript hacks to protect their content from manipulation. A Flash object can easily and comfortably be blocked with Flashbock, some Javascript hackery is far harder to handle.

Re:At last!

[hairyfeet]

Y'all wanna know why desktops and laptops are in decline? I hate to break the news to ya but it ain't because everyone is using an iPad, it is because as we system builders that are still doing well in this economy can tell you for several years the PC has been "good enough" and there simply is no killer app that makes users need to switch!

I have several customers who do their daily computing on what guys here would laugh at, late model P4s with a Gb of RAM and a couple hundred Gb HDD, but why should they switch? Webmail, FB, farmville, these things just don't slam even a 3.2Ghz P4 with HT, much less all those dual cores that have been sold since 06. hell my boys are both on hand me down Pentium Ds and when I offered to build them something bigger they were both "Uhhh...why? Our stuff works fine." all they do is surf and play MMOs and with both boxes having Radeon HD4850s everything just works fine.

The problem is too many in the industry as well as my fellow system builders got used to the "MHz Wars" where everyone tossed every 3 years and which gave them constant churn and that just isn't the case anymore. Hell i always built myself a new PC every year and a half but my AMD quad is going on 3 years now and will probably last me another 5 or more, why should I switch? My games play just fine, I have 8Gb of RAM and 3Tb of space, and I can always slap in a replacement for my HD4850 or upgrade my CPU to a 6 core later on down the road if I need more power. But as it is all my games play at my screens native 1600x900 smooth, video transcoding is nice, everything "just works" and now that I finally replaced my old laptop for a dual core netbook I honestly can't see myself needing another PC for several years.

So PCs aren't going anywhere, it is simply everybody has one. With cell phones folks chunk when the 2 year contract is up so that is creating churn and the tablets simply haven't be around long enough for everybody who wants one to have already bought one. I'm actually seeing quite good sales on the new AMD Brazos netbooks, I think the problem in that market is in the race to the bottom too many OEMs chose Atom without ION and that equals painful, but the Brazos has a nice Radeon built in and does full 1080P and plays WoW so everyone likes those. hell in my own family we have something like 7 desktop and 4 laptops, what would we do with more?

The ones that survive are gonna be smart and doing value add like me. I show folks how they can organize and stream everything with an HTPC, how to make that late model P4 or early dual into a great PC media center for the kids, how to set up sharing networks so you can drag and drop between every machine in the house, how to have it all "just work" wirelessly. PCs aren't going anywhere, if anything everyone has so many of them now nobody knows what to do with them. the smart guys will be showing them how to get the most out of what they have.

Really?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if 750 voices screamed out in terror and were laid off. But that noise was overshadowed by everybody else celebrating.

Seriously?? _THAT_ submission made it to the front page with _THAT_ tidbit?? There wasn't another submission that didn't make light of people losing their jobs?

Come on, Slashdot - I know you're trying to generate page views and whatnot to increase revenues but can we please stop being complete asses about it. Eventually you'll start driving people away which will DECREASE page views...

Seriously...

Laid off

[rabenja]

My friend sent me an email yesterday: "I'm about to go into a meeting where Adobe is laying off my whole team." He had worked on Flash for many years since Macromedia owned the project. After the meeting he said, "Just got out of meeting, I have a job until April 20, paid thru May 15, decent severance, but job will end."

Re:Laid off

[amicusNYCL]

He had worked on Flash for many years since Macromedia owned the project.

Is he one of the people I can blame for the bugs from back then that still exist today? I kind of feel like a dick for saying it, but maybe if his team were better at their jobs then they would still have them.

You are doing it wrong

[Hentes]

You are not supposed to use a browser on an Apple device. You have to download an app for every webpage you want to visit.

So... you bought TWO devices you don't like?

[SmallFurryCreature]

So, it is no secret Apple devices don't do flash and yet you bought two... way to go on voting with your dollars.

Buying TWO devices whose user experience you claim sucks. Please tell me you are not allowed to vote. Ever!

There is already agreement

[SuperKendall]

Next step: agreeing on a CODEC for the HTML5 videos

To support iOS devices you need to support h.264.

Thus supporting any other formats mean extra, needless work.

Pretty much any site on the web today tat supports video has already transcoded to h.264.

Hello, de-facto standard.

Re:There is already agreement

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Hello, de-facto standard.

You know what's a good way of confirming this ? Go on your favorite torrent site and try to find some video encoded in WebM or Theora. You can't, it's all x264 and xvid and the x264 stuff is both higher quality and becoming ever more popular. It perfectly mirrors what happened with mp3, no way h.264 is going away. So why spend precious developer time in an ultra competitive industry building support for another codec that you'll just have to support on top of the de-facto standard for which you'll be paying and developing anyway ? That fight is over, geeks are just in denial.

Real issue....locked doors

[PortHaven]

I think the real issue is far more hideous. With the likes of Apple (and now Microsoft) saying "No plugins". It was becoming clear only native apps were going to be allowed in the playground.

While many rejoice. See a closed proprietary system is in the death thralls. I caution you not to rejoice. But to contemplate what's really going on.

Apple made a closed system that allowed all profits to funnel through it. And not a peep out of the Dept. of Justice on such anti-competitive practices.

So Microsoft said, "Hey, let's do the same with Windows 8."

Adobe just merely read the writing on the wall. Such anti-competitive behaviors are going to be allowed. A user who purchases a computer will be told by the manufacturer what software they run on their own property.

Adobe doesn't make money on Flash. It costs them a small fortune. They make it on the tools they sell. And well, they're just going to do more with their tools outputting native and HTML5.

In the end....it's the consumers who lose. Less choice. Few alternatives. And it's a pay-to-play(ground).

All apps must be approved by Apple. All developers must share a 1/3 of their profits with Apple. Is it ANY wonder Apple exceeded even Exxon-Mobil?

There's an app for that. But you can't install it unless we approve and get a lion's share. How does this world look for developers?

$1

Apple takes 30 cents.
Gov. take 30 cents.
Developer is left with 40 cents to cover overhead and all.

Re:Real issue....locked doors

[BitZtream]

And not a peep out of the Dept. of Justice on such anti-competitive practices.

Because they aren't doing anything anti-competitive. THEY get to determine how their products are sold. They can choose to only allow things to be bought for their products in their store.

Anti-competitive practices would be coming into wal-mart and saying 'if you want to sell iPhones, you can't sell any other kind of phone' ... or course walmart would tell them to fuck off, but a smaller local chain may have to capitulate in order to not lose sales of the iPhone ... and THAT is anti-competitive, and THAT is what Microsoft got in trouble for.

Contrary to what you may think, Apple does have complete and total control over how ITS PRODUCTS are sold and handled. It can not tell anyone else how to handle other peoples products in their store. Apple say 'AT&T is the only company getting an iphone!' and thats okay. They can not say 'AT&T can ONLY sell the iPhone, no other phones if they want ours'

Neither you or anyone else gets to tell Apple how to sell or what to do with their product just because you don't like it. I don't like that you're such a self entitled spoiled brat, but that doesn't give me the right to force you to not be such a douche does it?

In the end....it's the consumers who lose. Less choice.

Thats the GPL vs Anti-GPL argument. You're arguing that losing flash means losing choice. Which is like me saying that GPL takes away choice because I can no longer NOT distribute the code.

And in both cases, it can be interpreted the other way. The user is being protected from being locked into a single vendors implementation.

All apps must be approved by Apple. All developers must share a 1/3 of their profits with Apple. Is it ANY wonder Apple exceeded even Exxon-Mobil?

And according to every financial report they've ever put out, the iTunes music store and the App store do just a little better than breaking even. This is publicly verifiable fact. They aren't sitting on 40 billion in cash because of their death grip on Apple developers, and no matter how many times you try to imply that, it still won't be the case.

The reason they've exceeded even Exxon-Mobile is because they are selling products people WANT. Exxon sells a product people need, people only buy as much of it as they have to and will buy it from the lowest priced person they can find. Exxon still makes a fortune because they can take advantage of the fact that its basically a requirement for many Americans to buy gas to commute at this point in time. Apple on the other hand makes a fortune selling products at almost 100% markup that are simply trendy gadgets ... but trendy gadgets which people are willing to pay way more for because they are that well done.

Unfortunately, your too busy blaming Apple for being evil to notice why they are doing as well as they are.

How does this world look for developers?

I can tell you from experience that it looks incredibly profitable and the 'Apple Tax' you're referring to doesn't' really add up to anything more the cost of the service unless you're a big developer with an existing infrastructure for other reasons. This only hurts the big guys (and only a little), it does nothing but good for the little guys, which you'd know if you had any experience what so ever selling software to random people on the Internet. A proper sales infrastructure is a pain in the ass for a small shop to maintain, so you're going to be paying someone else to do it unless you're an idiot or have far more time than money or brains. Now go compare pricing for that service and get back to me when you find the competition that you'd be so eager to use instead of Apple.

You're complaining about something that you clearly do not understand and have never been involved with.