Apple v Adobe Ping!
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Posted on 05/07/2010 5:16:42 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs sharply criticized Flash, which is used to produce videos and games for many Internet sites on Thursday. Apple has banned Flash from its iPhone and iPad.
A Microsoft executive pitched in later that day, saying while the ubiquity of Flash makes it easy for consumers to access video on the web, the standard has flaws.
"Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security and performance," said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for the Internet Explorer browser.
He said that Microsoft is backing the same protocols for delivering multimedia content over the Web that Apple is promoting, a group of standards known as HTML5.
But Microsoft was more conciliatory toward Adobe than Apple, saying it works closely with Flash engineers to help fix bugs that it finds in the product.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
This coming from somebody that works for Microsoft. I had a 360 red ring on me in less than 2 years, swapped new.
Nice way to marginalize a very powerful tool. HTML 5 has at least half a decade to go before it can even begin to catch on. HTML5 Does not work on all browsers yet. Even when standards are finalized, browsers still have to render that code. HTML5 is a language. If you don't know it, there's somewhat of a learning curve. The Flash output file .swf is used in MANY third-party output software development programs other than just Flash. The web and mobile markets are changing and we're seeing new technologies and methods arise. There is still a HUGE market for Flash.
Flash works for both programmers and designers. In my job, I use Flash to develop software simulations. There are few other tools that have the power to do this (it pretty much killed Authorware- what once was the industry standard for this.) HTML5 is a LONG way (if ever) capable of developing the type of interactions that can be done in Flash.
Shocked that you would back someone in opposition to Apple.
I am also backing that same someone in opposition to Microsoft.
Exactly. Microsoft’s doing the smart thing: supporting future standards (HTML5), the current industry standard (Flash), and their own solution (Silverlight). Whichever succeeds, Microsoft will be positioned to play.
Another good sign for Flash is that Adobe is about to release a player for Android. That will make a major difference in the phone wars- it is one of the iPhone’s biggest gaps.
I agree; I like that there is Flash on my WinMo phone (HTC Touch Pro 2), it works great with existing websites. Android and WinMo support flash, and the 900 pound gorilla in the smartphone market - Nokia - also supports it. Apple’s the only one out there and it is hurting them.
I’ve never understood the position that less choice (what Apple is pushing) is good for the consumer. Let the consumer choose.
by Erick Schonfeld
May 1, 2010
Earlier this week, Steve Jobs kicked the debate about the need for Flash into high gear, especially for Web video. As he explained, Apple products like the iPhone and iPad don’t support Flash because although 75 percent of video on the Web is in Flash ” almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads.” The next day, Microsoft weighed in, saying that Internet Explorer 9 would only support the H.264 codec for HTML video.
So how much video exactly is available in H.264? I asked Encoding.com, which has encoded 5 million videos over the past year for a variety of Websites and customers including MTV Networks, WebMD, Brightcove, Nokia, MySpace, and Red Bull. President Jeff Malkin sent me the chart above, which he believes is representative of the Web in general, including mobile. As the chart shows, in the past four quarters, the H.264 format went from 31 percent of all videos to 66 percent, and is now the largest format by far. Meanwhile, Flash is represented by Flash VP6 and FLV, which combined represent only 26 percent of all videos. That is down from a combined total of 69 percent four quarters ago. So the native Flash codecs and H.264 have completely flipped in terms of market share (Flash also supports H.264, however, but you don’t need a Flash player to watch H.264 videos)
Another data point that Steve Jobs mentions: All YouTube videos are available in H.264, which alone represents 40 percent of all videos on the Web. So these numbers from Encoding don’t seem so crazy.
All of these codecs and formats can seem like gobbledy gook. Malkin offers the following to explain the differences:
The formats can be confusing between containers and codecs. FLV is the Flash container with the old H.263 codec. Flash VP6 is the Flash container with the VP6 codec. H.264 is a codec that is utilized in a number of different containers (.FLV, .MP4, .MOV) and on Apple mobile devices and when deployed by browsers for HTML5. Microsoft just announced that IE will use H.264 as the default codec for HTML5. And, Google will be soon offering the VP8 codec as open source which will add another formidable flag in the format wars.
February 20th, 2010
Daniel Eran Dilger
Morgan Adams, an interactive content developer who knows a lot about building Flash, wrote in with an interesting perspective on Flash and the iPad. The remainder of this piece is his comments on the subject.
Inside Apple’s iPad: Adobe Flash
I’m biased. I’m a full-time Flash developer and I’d love to get paid to make Flash sites for iPad. I want that to make sense—but it doesn’t. Flash on the iPad will not (and should not) happen—and the main reason, as I see it, is one that never gets talked about:
Current Flash sites could never be made work well on any touchscreen device, and this cannot be solved by Apple, Adobe, or magical new hardware.
That’s not because of slow mobile performance, battery drain or crashes. It’s because of the hover or mouseover problem.
Many (if not most) current Flash games, menus, and even video players require a visible mouse pointer. They are coded to rely on the difference between hovering over something (mouseover) vs. actually clicking. This distinction is not rare. It’s pervasive, fundamental to interactive design, and vital to the basic use of Flash content. New Flash content designed just for touchscreens can be done, but people want existing Flash sites to work. All of them—not just some here and there—and in a usable manner. That’s impossible no matter what.
All that Apple and Adobe could ever do is make current Flash content visible. It would be seen, but very often would not work. Users would hate that broken promise much more than they hate gaps in pages, missing banner ads, and the need to download a game once from the App Store instead of re-downloading it every time they visit a Flash game page.
Mouseover examples:
* Video players where the controls appear on mouseover and hide otherwise. (This seems to be the norm, in fact. Whereas a click on the same video does something different: usually Pause. Try Hulu for instance.)
* Games where you steer with the mouse without clicking (extremely common).
* Menus that popup up subpage links when you mouse over a main button, vs. going directly to a main category page when you click.
* Buttons that have important explanations/summaries on mouseover, which you need to understand before deciding what to click.
* Functions that use mouseover to preview and click to commit; such as choosing hair colors for an avatar: you mouse over the colors until your character looks the way you like, and then you click to commit.
* Maps and diagrams that don’t use click at all, but pop up info as you mouse around.
* Numerous other custom mouseover functions that “just work” with a mouse and need no explanation.
None of these things can work right with a finger (or traditional stylus) because on a touchscreen, pointing at something without clicking isn’t a mouseover: it’s just holding your finger vaguely in the air. The device doesn’t even know it’s happening.
In addition, some Flash sites rely on right-clicks (such as for security settings), and many rely on a physical keyboard. Especially games, which are the main kind of content people want from Flash. (I’d say video, except video can easily be done without Flash, and sites are increasingly doing so. Much of the video missing from your favorite Flash site is probably easily found on YouTube anyway.) Games often use realtime key control, requiring a distinction between a single press and a long hold, and including the need for chording. For instance: holding right arrow continuously to walk, while simultaneously hitting the space bar to fire, and either hitting up-arrow once to jump or holding up-arrow longer to jump higher. A touchscreen keyboard can’t handle these kinds of rapid, precise combinations well. And the keyboard would block the game view, too. Games on a touchscreen need controls suitable for a touchscreen (and/or tilt).
The only potential “solutions” to the mouseover problem are terrible ones:
A) The best case: every Flash app on every site is re-thought by its designers and re-coded by its programmers (if they’re even still available), just for touchscreens. They wouldn’t use mouseovers any more—or else they’d have dual versions of all Flash content, so that mouse users could still benefit from the mouseovers they are used to. That’s a ton of work across the Web, for thousands of parties, and just isn’t going to happen. Plus, with many sites, mouseovers are so fundamental that the very concept of the site would be altered, creating a whole different experience that would annoy and confuse the site’s existing users. (And would this be any easier than simply re-designing without Flash at all? Not always.)
B) Gestures, finger gymnastics or extra physical buttons are created that simulate mouseover—which is absurd since mouseovers, by their nature, are meant to be simpler than a click/tap, not more complex. And meant to be natural, not something new to learn. Not a whole set of habits that violates our desktop habits. And any additional complexity is unworkable when it comes to games: you need to react quickly and simply, not remember when to hold the Simulate Mouseover button, or use three fingers, or whatever. The game itself is enough to deal with. Anything on top of that takes away fun.
C) Make clicking itself—the fundamental, constantly-used action—MORE complex. Such as requiring a double-tap or two-finger tap before anything is registered. (Two taps is how Mobile Safari does JavaScript popup menus: the first tap pops it up, the second selects.) But many Flash apps and games already use double-click (or rapid-fire clicking) for other things. Extra taps only make sense for certain limited situations (like menu popups). And it’s not just clicking: you have to allow for movement: dragging vs. a moving mouseover. And even if a system could be created that was quick and simple enough to do all this in the middle of a game, how would the user know which parts of a web page played by these special rules? One part of a page (the Flash elements) would do fundamental things like scrolling or link-clicking differently from the rest of the page! (Not to mention the rest of your touch-based apps.)
D) Have a visible mouse pointer near your finger, and not interact with things directly. Use Apple track-pad style tap-and-drag gestures, as seen in some VNC clients. This kind of indirect control violates the very principle of direct touch manipulation. This is making the touchscreen be something “like a laptop but worse” and has little reason to exist. And again, you’d have to keep remembering whether you were in direct touch mode or “drag the arrow” mode, and which parts of the page behaved in which way.
E) Require extra force for a “real” tap. So you’d have to learn habits for a light tap vs. a hard tap. This extra complexity is non-intuitive, cramp-inducing, and easy for the user to get wrong (even with click feedback, as in RIM’s failed BlackBerry SurePress experiment). This complicates the whole device just for the sake of one browser plugin, and makes it more expensive to build.
So it’s not just that Apple has refused to support Flash. It cannot, logically, be done. A finger is not a mouse, and Flash sites are designed to require a mouse pointer (and keyboard) in fundamental ways. Someday that may change, and every Flash site could be redesigned with touch-friendly Flash. But that doesn’t make Flash sites work now.
Even if slow performance, battery drain and crashes weren’t problems with Flash (and they truly are), nothing can give users of any touchscreen, from any company, an acceptable experience with today’s Flash sites. The thing so many complainers want is simply an impossibility.
By the way, imagine my embarrassment as a Flash developer when my own animated site wouldn’t work on the newfangled iPhone! So I sat down and made new animations using WebKit’s CSS animation abilities. Now desktop users still see Flash at adamsi.com, but iPhone users see animations too. It can be done.
Morgan Adams, adamsimmersive
interactive design and games
By Chloe Albanesius
March 29, 2010
Do you want to develop video for Apple's upcoming iPad? Brightcove on Monday released a new solution that will allow publishers to develop video experiences for Flash and HTML5 without incurring extra costs.
"We are investing to make it possible for publishers who are using the Brightcove online video platform to deliver both Flash and HTML5 video experiences with equivalent capability without requiring a lot of extra work," Jeff Whatcott, vice president of marketing at Brightcove, wrote in a blog post.
Apple will start shipping the iPad on April 3, but the device will not include support for Adobe Flash. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs reportedly said the decision not to support Flash was because it it too buggy, and that HTML5 is the wave of the future. Adobe chief technical officer Kevin Lynch subsequently defended Flash as superior to HTML5 and accused Apple of being uncooperative in terms of getting Flash on the iPad.
Internet squabbles aside, the iPad will not include Flash support, which poses a problem for publishers developing in Flash who do not want to be locked out of the iPad market. Whatcott said Brightcove's Experience for HTML5 aims to solve that problem.
"For publishers who are used to building video experiences by cobbling together technologies on their own, the requirement to support HTML5 in parallel with whatever they are doing with Flash means unwelcome additional cost and complexity for their web development teams," Whatcott wrote. "[But] publishers really have no choice if they want to continue to maximize their audience. Dealing with web client fragmentation is going to be the reality for the foreseeable future."
Brightcove's HTML5 solution, therefore, will allow developers to "target HTML5 devices without sacrificing the ability to customize the playback environment, gather detailed analytics, manage multi-bit rate delivery, and monetize their video with advanced advertising," he said.
The solution icnludes an automatic device detection, which will detect a non-Flash device – like the iPad – and switch between Flash the HTML5 to suit the viewer's device capabilities. In addition to the iPad, the offering will also work on the iPhone and iPod touch, Brightcove said.
The Brightcove Experience for HTML5 will be added to the existing Brightcove Professional, Enterprise, and Express $499 editions. Customer already using these products can access the HTML5 capabilitites at no extra charge.
Whatcott stressed that HTML5 development is ongoing, so Brightcove will add more features to the product as the year goes on.
"In many ways HTML5 today is where Flash video was in 2002," he wrote. "Replicating the massive industry ecosystem of ISVs, tools, services economy, developer community, and knowledge economy that has grown up around Flash will not happen overnight. But we have already laid the foundations of HTML5 support, and we would expect to make very substantial progress over the rest of this year."
As a result, Whatcott said that Brightcove's support of HTML5 does not mean it will no longer support Flash. He criticized "Flash-bashing rhetoric" and defended the product.
"Our work to support HTML5 is not about weakening Flash, it is about pragmatically solving problems for our customers," he said. "Flash is and will continue to be a critical platform for us and for our customers."
At this point, most online video is still experienced via Flash and that will likely continue for the forseeable future, Whatcott said.
"We have a very strong strategic alliance with Adobe, and we continue to believe that it is in our interests and the interests of our customers to be at the forefront of innovation on around the Flash Platform," he concluded. "Our work with HTML5 is in addition to, not instead of, our work with Flash."
More detailed information about Brightcove Experience for HTML5 is available on the company's Web site.
by Rene Ritchie
Saturday, Apr 10, 2010
As he’s been doing a lot lately, Apple CEO Steve Jobs replied to an email from a developer concerned about iPhone 4 SDK’s ban on using cross-compilers like Flash CS5 or MonoTouch to create apps.
After a brief exchange about Daring Fireball’s article on the matter, Greg Slepak wrote:
I still think it undermines Apple. You didn’t need this clause to get to where you are now with the iPhone’s market share, adding it just makes people lose respect for you and run for the hills, as a commenter to that article stated:
[...] I don’t think Apple has much to gain with 3.3.1, quite the opposite actually.
To which Jobs sent (not iPhone or iPad this time, but from his Mac):
We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.
That users are picking sides is interesting. Adobe wants to control the creation and distribution tools (Flash CS5 and the Flash plugin). Apple wants to control the creation and distribution tools (Xcode and App Store). There’s a battle going on for the next generation of computing, with Google, Microsoft (who won the last one) and others deep in the mix and they all want desperately to win. Both are good or evil depending on how closely their goals mirror the individual’s in question. So, while picking sides is inevitable for some, it’s also part of each company’s strategy.
By Jim Dalrymple
APRIL 21, 2010, 9:48 PM PT
Adobe on Tuesday said it would abandon efforts to allow developers to create iPhone apps in Flash CS5 because Apple essentially banned developers from using the technology. However, Apple fired back on Wednesday, making its position perfectly clear.
“Someone has it backwards — it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 (all supported by the iPhone and iPad) that are open and standard, while Adobe’s Flash is closed and proprietary,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said in a statement.
Adobe’s Mike Chambers said while the feature will ship with CS5, the company is “not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.” Adobe is convinced that Apple will reject any apps created with its technology and believes any apps that have been accepted will be removed from the App Store.
Apple has said all along it didn’t believe Flash was a good mobile technology and resisted supporting it since the first iPhone was released.
As part of its promotion of the iPad, Apple has even gone so far as to promote Web sites that use HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, showing users what can be done with open technologies.
Thoughts on Flash
Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.
I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.
First, there’s “Open”.
Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.
Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.
Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.
Second, there’s the “full web”.
Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.
Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.
Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.
Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.
In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?
Fourth, there’s battery life.
To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.
Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.
When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.
Fifth, there’s Touch.
Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?
Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.
Sixth, the most important reason.
Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.
We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.
This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.
Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.
Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.
Conclusions.
Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.
The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.
New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.
Steve Jobs
April, 2010
Heh...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.