Was Apple right? Adobe Flash crashes twice during mobile demo

ZDNet ^

[Gomez]

Nothing sucks more than being on stage in front of a bunch of techies and having your demo crash on you twice. Actually, the only way that sucks more is if you’re Adobe and it’s Flash that’s crashing on a mobile device, forcing folks to wonder if Steve Jobs was right about the stability of Flash.

This incident happened last week at FlashCamp Seattle, according to a blog post by Jeff Croft, a Seattle developer who also moderated a panel at the event.

[gunsequalfreedom]

You're not really an experienced computer user, are you? You are coming off as being very aggressively ignorant.

Overly aggressive, you got me. If I've sounded ignorant, that is either my fault or your love of mac getting in the way.

As a computer user I am very experienced. Programmer I am not even close.

I do very well with what some obviously very intellegent people intended for me to do with these machines that they created and advance. That experience is extensively in graphic design. I first put my hands on a mac when it could output a professional graphic font and the IBM could not.

Anyhow, enjor your mac.

[krb]

or your love of mac getting in the way

I'm a PC dude. I do have some experience with the mac though, and am getting up to speed with iPhone development. So I am not yet at the "fan boy" level, but am working on it :-)

The reason I suggested you were being ignorant is that your original post actually illustrates what Steve Jobs was talking about. As has been explained already, that is an app going off into the weeds and tying up its message queue (not "crashing the system"). The only time I see that on my mac is when I am at hulu.com watching a flash video in the browser.

[Richard Kimball]

I use Apple products a lot. I like them better than PCs, but any system can break. I've had it happen on both types of systems, although more frequently on a PC.

In this instance of Flash on mobile devices, at best, Flash is not ready for prime time. There have been multiple instances of Flash devices crashing Android phones during demos. The Adam Ink, which was supposed to be a challenger to the iPad, has been delayed partly because they can't get Flash to work on it.

I'm not sure how much of it shows up on FR, but I'm going to wildly guess that there are a lot of paid operatives on the web posing as consumers, making the case both for and against Flash on mobile devices. There's a lot of money involved here.

[gunsequalfreedom]

I'm not sure how much of it shows up on FR, but I'm going to wildly guess that there are a lot of paid operatives on the web posing as consumers

First, I am raising the white flag. I should not have jumped into this thread. But definately not a paid operative. I would not put it past companies, though, to do exactly what you suspect.

[dayglored]

Thank you for that very reasonable reply.

> Well, that explains your love of macs, you like a challenge.

Macs are okay, but I'm not a Mac partisan. I've used nearly every small computer ever made, and they all have their plusses and minuses. That's why I gave you the link to my profile page; it's all there.

And BTW, the REAL challenges were the homebrew computers I built in the 70's and early 80's. Did everything, hardware, software, BIOS, entirely from scratch.

> That final ribbing aside, we've run the course on this Ford / Chevy style debate. I'm sure your Mac runs fine and you are happy with it. I personally don't see the need for one or that that it does anything so much better that I should own one.

Computers are just tools. First you figure out what you want to do, then you pick the tool that best suits the tasks. Otherwise it's like buying a hammer before you know if you need a hammer or a pair of pliers. People ask me all the time, "What kind of computer should I get?" and my answer is a question, "What do you want to do?"

If what you want to do doesn't require a given type of computer, it would be silly to get one.

> The Ipad and Iphone are undeniably great advancements and something I definately am considering purchasing.

I've got an iPod-Touch (iPhone w/o the cell radio), and it's very handy. I prefer a dumber cell phone, so I've got a low-end LG Verizon cell. Works fine, does what I want a cell to do. Might get an iPad for my teenage daughter if she thinks it'll suit her needs. Maybe when they've matured a little more I'll find I need its features, but I don't see myself getting one in the near future.

> Sorry for dumping on the discussion so much. I should have known better from past discussions I've had on mac threads. All the best to you.

Likewise.

Anyway, I think -all- flame wars are stupid, whether about Mac vs. PC, EMACS vs. vi, SysV vs. BSD, etc. I find fanbois of all persuasions annoying, and my opinion of FReepers who join threads solely to slam other FReepers for their preferences is that they are twits. And it's unfortunate when things sometimes get out of hand.

So Welcome again to FreeRepublic, and enjoy your stay.

BTW, I liked your graphic of the USB beachball in #32. :)

[rockrr]

Surely the author remembers the infamous PC crashes of Balmer’s and Gate’s...

[Swordmaker]

I already posted how much I have used an Apple/Mac. It was for 2 years, 5 days a week, 8 to 10 hours a day in a production environment. OS10 I beleive was the operating system with machines that were brand new at the time. It was not just one station I worked at, but several. The machine did not drop on the floor. Nobody spilled coffee on it.

I've asked you what you were doing... What software were you using? I worked with publishers in production environments using both the old pre-UNIX Macs and later with the OS X Unix based Macs... and what you describe sounds like what you would experience with the pre-UNIX Macs... not the later Macs. Not ONCE did one of the UNIX based Macs in these production environments, and there were dozens of them, ever have a system crash. I've been using OS X since it's release in 2001... and have had exactly three (3) full blown system crashes... and everyone of them occurred in systems before OS X.2.

And even under the old Mac pre-UNIX systems, the professional publishing software had auto-backup available—if it was turned on—which I made sure was done in every circumstance. So, either your software was not professional, or your IT people were incompetent, or what you are claiming is false.

Why would you mention the hockey puck mouse, a 13 year old design error that was quickly dropped, never to be repeated, in this conversation? What does That abortion of a design have to do with system crashes? Apple users almost universally panned that design... it was horrible to use. Does Apple make mistakes? You bet it does.

Your claim that the systems ran OS10 tells me a lot about your level of expertise... or lack there-of.

[Ramius]

Well, back on the topic of Adobe and Flash... something is going very wrong over at Adobe, methinks. In my IT shop we’re hearing more and more complaints about pretty much everything adobe. From Flash to Acrobat. One of the harder parts of doing our XP to 7 upgrades has been getting all the Acrobat updates to work. Real pain in the butt.

Something isn’t right with Adobe. Quality control-wise.

[DesScorp]

Flash is definitely the number one pain in my *** on my Mac. It kills both Safari on my Mini and Opera on my eMac with alarming regularity.

However, I have to say... I don’t have these flash problems on my Windows box. So we still don’t know which party is truly responsible for Flash’s horrid state on the Mac.

[DesScorp]

"That's an application crash, not a system crash. As long as you can do a Force-Quit, the system is still fine. Applications crash much more often than the entire system."

True, but I've had app crashes so bad that while I technically didn't have to reboot, it was just easier to do so.

"Of course, Win95/98/Me was even worse, but those were the 90's..."

Eh, that slowly changed. When 95 came out, it was fun but as unstable as an Irishman on an all night binge. But by the late 90's, Classic made 98 look good in comparison on the stability front. Classic was a beautiful, marvelous experience when it worked, but more and more, it stopped working a lot. 98 was pretty darned stable once you had all your updates and such. I think this is why Apple rushed OS X to market, even though 10.0 and 10.1 were basically unusuable. Just the promise of "stable, user friendly Unix" was needed to convince folks that Apple really was improving things. I don't know of anyone that actually used X on a daily basis until 10.2 came along.

[dayglored]

> Classic was a beautiful, marvelous experience when it worked, but more and more, it stopped working a lot. 98 was pretty darned stable once you had all your updates and such.

Yeah, that's about right. Apple dragged the original MacOS out long past its prime, and personally I found it nearly unusable. I bought one of the early iMacs (a purple one for my then 5-yr-old daughter) with 8.x on it, eventually upgraded to 9.2.2 (the last release, as I recall), and the OS worked, but it was clearly on its last legs, architecturally.

Win98 was the high point of the DOS family. I still have it around on VMs to play with because on modern hardware it runs so damn fast it's scary.

In 2001 I managed a project that mated state of the art Firewire external storage controllers with the brand-new OS-X, and was horrified at first by the lack of stability. 10.2 pulled the rug out from under the project, but it was for the best, long-term. As you said, that was when Apple started to get it right.

Being a Unix-head myself, OS-X is the best of both worlds -- a fairly stable and usable GUI over arguably the best OS foundation the world has ever seen.

[driftdiver]

shhh drink the cool aid, its guuuud.

[SunkenCiv]

Somehow this has to be Al Gore’s fault. ;’) Thanks Swordmaker.

[Terpfen]

However, I have to say... I don’t have these flash problems on my Windows box. So we still don’t know which party is truly responsible for Flash’s horrid state on the Mac.

The problem is Adobe. The Windows version crashes less because they focus what little development efforts they make almost exclusively on the Windows version. You can see the same effect on Adobe's other products, such as Photoshop.

[gunsequalfreedom]

I don’t need to be an expert in mac to know a beachball when I see it. From what I can gather your definition of a crash is different than mine. Mine is when I lose work. Yours seems to be when the entire system shuts down.

Tomorrow if you like I’ll ask IT for all the specs on the machine. For now, they are about 2 years old straight out of the box. It is a Gannet publishing house.

Are you suggesting there are two kinds of macs you can buy new, some that work and others that don’t?

[jacquej]

Well, guns, I have no claim to be any kind of “puter egg spurt”, but that spinning beach ball you mention will sometimes happen on our Macs, usually when using Safari, and some web site is acting flaky, and won’t load.

Al I do is open up “force quit”, and quit Safari, if I am tired of waiting for the website to get it’s act together, and go on to whatever else I am working on.

It is a good idea to restart the Mac every once in awhile, since that can clear up any confusion in it’s behavior, and since the Mac restarts so quickly, it really isn’t much of a problem.

We have been using Macs since 1982 or so, and never could have run our business without them. Not all of us can afford the business downtime, or the IT people, to keep our systems up and running. We have never been troubled with the viruses, worms, Trojans, etc, either.

My husband is a “solo practioner”, an architect, and construction manager. I am just a housewife, with no formal training, but have been able to manage millions of dollars worth of contractor and sub-contractor accounts, investor accounts, and produce timely financial documents for both sides.

This was done with the basic software that came with our Macs, as most dedicated financial software wasn’t suitable for this type of project management accounting. And, I have been able to produce some pretty impressive presentation drawing for clients, using very reasonable software, compared to the hideously expensive CAD stuff out there.

If you are interested, check out EazyDraw, and look for an elevation I did in their “examples” file. Then check the price of the software, and recognize that the drawing is exactly to scale.

I say again, I am just an average older woman, and no “geek”. I think I am better able to comment on the reliability of the Mac for those of us who just want to get the work out, and the paycheck in.

[Swordmaker]

I don’t need to be an expert in mac to know a beachball when I see it. From what I can gather your definition of a crash is different than mine. Mine is when I lose work. Yours seems to be when the entire system shuts down.

You still have not answered what software you are using that is losing your work... and why your IT department hasn't set up auto-backup. This is a no-brainer in a professional environment. Again, I tell you I've worked in professional environments and my experience is the complete opposite of what you claim... so something is wrong.

It may be that your IT department, either through ignorance or deliberately, has scrimped on RAM on your workstations... and you are doing an extraordinary amount of virtual memory swapping because of a lack of RAM on your systems. If you are using large color graphics and are working with inadequate RAM, you will see the beach ball frequently as the system swaps work spaces from the hard drive to RAM. If you get impatient, thinking it has "crashed," and force the App to quit or reboot, you are doing things exactly wrong. The application will catch up eventually. The Beach Ball does NOT mean the system has crashed... it means the application is busy. Adobe Photoshop wants a HUGE amount a scratch disk space allocated to it... because it uses huge raw files and keeps a lot of versions around while you manipulate the file. Unfortunately, Adobe has not spent anywhere near the amount of time optimizing the code that handles these raw files for Macs that they have optimizing it for Windows.

Are you suggesting there are two kinds of macs you can buy new, some that work and others that don’t?

No, I'm telling you that what you describe does not agree with my professional experience with Macs in production environments when they are properly configured by someone who knows what they are doing. The Mac Systems DO NOT CRASH. The software MAY hang... it may stop working... but for the OS to crash is so rare, that in offices with dozens of Macs working I can think of fewer than half a dozen times in the past five years where a System crash has occurred and each time it was attributed to a hardware issue, usually a hard drive failure. Twice, it was literally to the magic blue smoke being let out of some early G5 iMacs... those that were in the batch that had the bad capacitors on the logic board that failed in their third-fourth year of operation... when the capacitors swelled and burst. One was still under Apple's extended warranty for the problem and was repaired free of charge... the other failed five days after Apple ended that extended warranty... so they offered to just charge us for the logic board. Since the New G5 logic board was something over $600, we just bought a refurbbed Intel iMac for a couple hundred dollars more.

Professional graphics production software, properly configured, should not lose your work—even if the software crashes (different from a system crash—learn the difference)—on either a Mac or a PC. I have often been called into businesses where the Windows centric IT departments have either through ignorance, or sometimes through anti-Mac malice, have failed to do their jobs in the Graphics departments and sometimes have actually actively sabotaged the Macs requested by some departments... or just abdicated their duties to the graphic artists in those departments.

The example of minimal RAM was a real world case where an IT manager had pulled the 1GB factory RAM from the Macs that were purchased over his objections cause he didn't like Macs, that had been specifically requested but that had been personally approved by the president of the company. The IT manager had then installed 512MB of cheap third party RAM, and then put them in service, and claimed that's what they came with. with the intent of replacing the Macs with Windows machines, when they didn't perform as intended. He then refused to help when they bogged down on everything. As an independent consultant brought in to trouble shoot what was going on, I brought the Macs back to factory specs, and they performed perfectly adequately. I pointed out to the company president the actual specs of those Macs, and that the RAM in them was not factory original... and that IT manager lost his job before I left that day, escorted off the premises with a box of his belongings by security officers. It looked like a perp walk.

[dayglored]

I would estimate that "inadequate RAM for the task load" accounts for at least half of the hardware-related problems reported to my IT team (I'm Director of System Admin). Modern OSes do not like to run in swap.

RAM is cheap (repeat after me: "RAM is cheap".)

Max-out the RAM in your computer. Right now. Don't think about it, just run it up to the most the system will hold. If you're running a 32-bit OS (e.g. WinXP), then there's no point going higher than 4GB (3GB in some machines).

RAM is cheap (repeat after me: "RAM is cheap".)

You'll get rid of the hourglasses and beachballs and cursing at Task Manager. Life will be good.

(RAM is cheap.)

> ...an IT manager had pulled the 1GB factory RAM from the Macs that were purchased over his objections cause he didn't like Macs...

I believe it. Hatred is an ugly thing, especially hatred of people. But hatred of hardware is just stupid. And the visceral, blind hatred that some folks have toward Apple Macs is just amazing. I just don't get why somebody would risk their job to pull a stupid stunt like that. But I don't doubt it happened -- I've heard of similar occurrences.

Oh, did I mention, RAM is cheap? :)

[gunsequalfreedom]

Ah, forget it. You write too long. I’m giving up on this one. Mac is great. Best machine ever. Worth every extra few hundred dollars its costs. As soon as my PC causes me to lose work because it (a) crashed or (b) a program stopped responding I will go out and get a Mac.

[gunsequalfreedom]

The Mac Systems DO NOT CRASH. The software MAY hang... it may stop working... but for the OS to crash is so rare...

I think we covered this ground. My definition of crash is not the operating system completely shutting down. What is the term I am supposed to be using for a program that stop responding and causes me to lose any unsaved work. If that is not crash, then what is it?

Anyhow, you are definately way smarter about macs tha me. I was just forced to use them at one point in my career. If I have my choice between doing graphics on a PC or a mac, based on my experience with both, I prefer the PC. There is no difference in the final work product. Sorry, I just don't see the need for them.