KenC

Flash Player: Apple's Blind Spot?

Someone has an unhealthy obsession with Flash. He also seems to confuse Flash Lite with Flash.

Remember Apple skates to where the puck will be, not where it's been. The future of the internet will marginalize Flash. It may be ubiquitous today, but it's not a standard and three of the biggest players are actively trying to marginalize it, Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

The future of computing is about efficiency and standards. Flash is neither. It's a dinosaur, like Internet Explorer. Look to the future not the past.

Flash Seems to Be Coming to Apple's iPhone - But Is That a Good Thing?

Of course AdobeAir likes Flash, it's Adobe!

Flash is not a webstandard and needs to be killed. It's a resource hog, exactly what we don't need with a mobile device.

Plus, how does one search a flash site? Given how much Adobe likes metadata, the fact that flash is difficult to search, is ironic. Just kill it for the internet's good.

Adobe's CS4 Should Give Apple Sales a Boost

I haven't heard alot of good about CS4. Mostly, I've heard it's a minor release.

And, about how it effects Apple. As the original respondent posted, it won't be popular with Mac users as CS4 is not yet 64-bit for the Mac. Mac users will have to wait for CS5. Why?

Apple has been telling developers for a long time to use Cocoa to write their apps. Adobe, has been dragging their feet, which they always do, and was depending upon Carbon, hoping that Apple would write a Carbon 64, allowing them to keep their Carbon code, and make CS4, 64-bit. Apple did not write Carbon 64, and deserve some blame, but they did constantly warn developers not to depend upon it, and that they should be writing their code in Cocoa. Since, Adobe has to rewrite their code in Cocoa, there will be no 64-bit CS4. Users have to wait until CS5.

Complete Web Browsing On Your Cell Phone? Not Yet

Flash Lite is NOT Flash. Heck, last time I looked at Adobe's website for devices with Flash, I think I went thru half the list, before giving up, as there was not a single device that uses Flash. Everything was Flash Lite.

There's no doubt that ubiquity often drives standards adoption, much like language. What's slang today, is in Webster's tomorrow. I think the writing was on the wall for PDFs that it would become an adopted standard sooner or later. As for Flash, the jury is still out.

What I think you are missing is the movement, outside of MS, towards web standards. That's why I referenced a loose alliance of WebKit-based browsers and apps. There's alot of momentum on that side of the ball, and even MS has been forced to respond.

I think it's not a given that something like Flash will become a standard. In fact, you've got large players like Google moving away from Flash and re-encoding all their Youtube videos in standards-compliant H.264.

Complete Web Browsing On Your Cell Phone? Not Yet

I think the trouble people are having or maybe it's the author is the definition of what the full internet or real internet is. I think most people don't realize that Flash is NOT a web standard. It may be popular, but not being a standard means proper code should avoid it. I don't think it is part of the real internet. Honestly, I think as the internet gets more and more mobile, more and more coders will avoid Flash, with it eventually ending up on the trash heap, unless it improves significantly. It's heavy and slow, just bad news for a mobile device.

I'm not sure whether the author knows the difference between JAVA and javascript. The iPhone browser allows JavaScript, but doesn't run JAVA. I haven't heard too many people complain about not having JAVA other than Sun Microsystems.

Further, WebKit on your S60 browser, is from Apple. Apple developed the rendering engine WebKit and gave it back to the open-source community, that's how Nokia can use it, as does Adobe for Adobe AIR, as does Google for Android and Chrome. And, there are literally a dozen other browsers or browser-based apps built on the frameworks of WebKit. This is the real story, the story of the rise of WebKit. A loose WebKit alliance between all the non-MS companies.

It's just funny to read the comments comparing Safari to S60 to Chrome, when they are all built on the same rendering engine. Sure there'll be some small differences in performance as Safari 4.0 uses SquirrelFish as its JavaScript engine, while Chrome uses V8 as its.

If the author wants to keep tabs on how the real internet is progressing into the mobile world, all he need do is go to:

webkit.org

And, you can read all about WebKit and the SurfinSafari Blog, and how WebKit was the first to pass all 100 of the Acid3 tests back in March. Of course, the Acid3 test was the acid test of meeting web standards. WebKit scored 100%. I believe Gecko which powers Mozilla scored 100% as well.

My recollection is that desktop MS IE 6 or 7, scored about a 12 of 100 on the Acid3 test. I just tested my Mobile Safari and got a score of 72. So, my Mobile Safari meets more web standards as defined by Acid3 than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

I think history will show that Safari qualifies as the Real Internet, regardless of what the British advertising board thinks. If you read their statement, it has more to do with public expectations than published standards. Of course, since Flash is not installed by default, I really wonder what they are talking about.

Can Apple's Resistance to Flash Content Last?

Flash is not "open", and it is not a "standard". It's proprietary, that's why MS had to license it.

And, if you put flash on a mobile device, that has barely no internet presence(Win mobile devices as measured by In-Stat), then how is anyone going to ever use it?

Lastly, Steve Jobs has stressed the usability of the iPhone. That's the secret sauce. That's why iPhone internet usage already exceeds that of all Win Mobile devices combined after 10 years of being on the market. Putting Flash on an iPhone will make the iPhone unbearably slow, besides being a battery hog. How does that help usability? It doesn't. The reasons why Flash is not on the iPhone is so obvious, it amazes me that the media just parrot the PR-speak of MS.

The bigger story is why is MS adding Flash, when they are developing Silverlight, a Flash-competitor? Is it really choice, or is it desperation?

It's sort of like the PR-spin MS put out about Xbox 360 game consoles coming in 3rd in sales both in January and February. They said it was supply-constrained. Did any analyst check to see if that were actually true? I mean, go to the stores. Do you see "sold out" signs where Xbox inventory should be sitting? I don't. I see lots of Xbox consoles waiting to be sold. There's no supply constraint. It's MS PR-spin, because they stuffed the Channel in Xmas and retailers have to move them off the shelves before MS can ship more. That's why the numbers are down, but are any analysts doing any store checks? Beuller? Beuller?