Here's my simple opinion on this matter: Flash is NOW. Stop talking about the future that has yet to be optimized for implementation.
Adam Bank's opinion:
http://www.adambanks...ughts-on-flash/
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So Steve Jobs finally posted the reasoning for his decision to kill Flash, in any form, on the iPhone/iPad platform.
Some of what he says makes sense. It really does. I don’t necessarily disagree with the decision not to support Flash directly. I do think it’s a bit like Apple’s decision to pre-empt the market by dropping serial and parallel ports, rewrite its OS from scratch instead of crippling it with backward compatibility, and so on. In other words, brave and forward-looking.
Then again, there’s stuff here that Steve is Just Not Getting.
For example:
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.*
Love how he makes this sound like Apple supported Adobe, rather than vice versa. The Mac’s big foothold in the market was always in the creative industries, primarily as the basis for the DTP revolution. Without Adobe technology that would never have happened. For years, Macs couldn’t even render fonts without Adobe Type Manager.
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.
What a load of utter cobblers. Adobe is still hugely focused on the creative industries and the creative industries are still hugely dependent on Adobe. To portray Adobe as having decamped to the corporate dark side isn’t even funny, it’s just stupid.
Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products
Let’s put that another way, shall we? Creative Suite users account for [insert your own very significant proportion] of professional Mac sales. If Apple were to piss off Adobe to the extent that Creative Suite disappeared from the Mac, I wouldn’t switch to Apple’s graphics and publishing software, I’d switch to Windows. You know why? Apple doesn’t make graphics and publishing software.
Anyway, Steve, go on?
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.
Oh, you wanted us to better understand that fact? Sorry, I thought you wanted to bury it in clause 3.3.1 of a developer agreement revision that you didn’t even publicly announce. Next time I want someone to better understand what I’m doing, I’ll write it on a PostIt, stick it up my own arse and blog about it a month later.
Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.
Why bother? Everyone else and their dog have already rehearsed this argument. Blah blah blah. Highlights of Steve’s version:
…HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others…
Whoa! That’s big news. Last I heard, HTML5 was unlikely even to be recommended as a standard for another couple of years, let alone finalised and ratified. It’s almost like you’re telling us we don’t need Adobe’s stuff because something to which Apple has made a negligible contribution is going to come along sometime within our lifetime and do similar things. Which would be silly, obviously. Wait, that is what you’re saying.
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 [...] 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.
Run that by me again. Developing a browser (software for viewing, not making, web pages) that supports existing standards is ‘creating open standards’? Tortuous much?
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
‘Almost all’? What? What? This is beyond reality distortion.
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
Agreed (see, I’m not just randomly arguing with everything) – but some YouTube content still refuses to play on my iPhone, and even if you counted their whole 40% of the market, it simply isn’t my experience that ‘almost all’, or even a majority, of web video I try to access on my iPhone will play. That’s just video, before we even get into Flash proper.
iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.
Absolutely, totally, utterly, flat wrong. If you put that in an ad, there’s no way it would be approved for broadcast. Just not true.
Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true.
As that woman in Catherine Tate’s office sketch would say: Yes. It is.
Meanwhile:
Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009.
Meh.
We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash.
Would that be ‘know first hand’ as in ‘don’t have any evidence to show’? Still, fair cop, it certainly crashes my Mac more often than anything except the operating system, iTunes and Safari. And all Microsoft’s software. You still like Microsoft, right?
We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems
Yeah, you phoned Adobe’s main switchboard and got a ticket number.
In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices.
Not really qualified to comment on that, but general impression: true. Hence, I understand the reluctance to pollute iPx.
Fourth, there’s battery life. To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware [...] Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder
Wait – wait – wait! You don’t want Flash now because of a limitation Flash had in the past? Really? Have you been drinking German beer?
Fifth, there’s Touch. [...] 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?
OMFG.
Well, here I have to admit I was wrong. I said:
I realise Steve Jobs may have trouble understanding that other people actually have to do stuff to respond to change, not just shout at someone ‘Fire Flash devs! Hire iPhone devs!’, but I don’t believe he’s oblivious to the scale of the challenge.
OK, now I do believe it. Totally oblivious.
Finally, to the app packager question.
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
I would interrupt here to insert a list of all the sub-standard apps already approved by Apple that have nothing to do with Flash, but I don’t have three months of my life to spare.
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.
Sort of get that. Problem: at the moment, for the thousands of developers and creatives who do have the skills to use Flash but don’t have the first glimmer of a clue how to code in Objective-C, none of the enhancements of the iPx platform are available. The platform isn’t available at all. (I wrote about this in my reaction to 3.3.1.) And the only way it’s ever going to be available is via some kind of third party tool. One with full typographical support. You know, like Adobe TLF.
The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary
No it doesn’t. Because from magazine companies, arguably the content sector most excited about the iPad, there’s so far an avalanche of PDF-derived shovelware but only a trickle of original apps with genuinely innovative and appropriate ux. And that now looks like changing very slowly at best. Far from ensuring the predominance of high quality content, removing the Flash route delays it.
Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future
Agree! But Steve – what about the present?
Developer of Flash:
http://jessewarden.c...g-the-lies.html
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Apple has posted Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash“. There are a lot of lies and half truths. No one will care. The article has enough valid points that people won’t check up on them.
That said, here’s my attempts to correct the lies.
Lie #1: “Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary.”
The Flash IDE, yes. The Flash Player, no. Here is a list of technologies open sourced/published by Macromedia/Adobe that are in the Flash Player ecosystem:
1. ActionScript 3 runtime, called Tamarin. Given to Mozilla to hopefully utilize in future browsers.
2. RTMP (and it’s ilk), the protocol for real-time video & audio streaming as well as data (AMF). Yes, many want “more” open sourced. Red5 and Wowza seem to be doing just fine with what is there currently.
3. The SWF format itself, which is what Flash Player plays/runs, has most of it’s spec published in case you want to generate SWF files.
This street goes both ways, too. Macromedia/Adobe has adopted open source technologies into Flash Player with the hopes of embracing standards, not just the de-facto ones.
1. ActionScript 1, 2, and 3 are all based on EMCAScript. Yes, it’s not as compliant as many would like. Additionally, Adobe did participate in many ECMA Script discussions/debates. Yes, 4 didn’t turn out so well for Adobe.
2. The XML parsing is based on E4X, ECMA Script for XML.
I’m not saying Adobe’s open sourced a lot of the Flash Player. There’s open source, there’s published, and then there is open source.
Regarding their products, he’s wrong there too. The Flex SDK, one of the biggest boosts for the Flash Platform in the past 4 years, is also open source (yes, the real kind). Most utilize Flex Builder, built on top of the open source Eclipse.
Using a blanket statement saying Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary is a lie. It paints an incorrect & negative picture over all the wonderful things Macromedia/Adobe have done in open source around their products.
Lie #2: “HTML5 being adopted by Google”
Google created the first browser to fully integrate plugins, and continues to work with Adobe to do so. Google also utilizes Flash Player in Gmail for both file uploading, and configuring your web cam. Google utilizes Flash Player in their online maps product for street view. Google Finance utilizes Flash Player for a lot of their charts. Their video site, YouTube, utilizes Flash Player for their videos.
Google didn’t start out with Flash. They started with text, AJAX, and later Flash. They’ve done a lot of forays into HTML5, yes, and will continue to do so. Saying they are “adopting” it, and only it and not Flash Player, is incorrect.
Lie #3: “…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…”
Incorrect. If a video is H264, that doesn’t mean it can play on the iPhone. If you look at the iPhone specs, you’ll see the only support a subset of what H264 offers, specifically 2 major components to quality video: Using a maximum of the Baseline profile, with Simple for higher bitrates/resolutions, as well as 2.5 for maximum (ish) bitrate.
Not all H264 videos conform to these specs. YouTube converted a lot of their Spark (Flash 6/7) videos to H264 to support iPhone because there was money to be gained in the large investment. Even so, not all YouTube videos work on the iPhone, in part because of the aforementioned reasons. There is a reason why when you upload a H264 video to YouTube, they’ll often re-encode it.
I’ve been in web video for 7 years. Getting video to work in the browser is the easy part. Setting up video encoding farms to support thousands/millions of users is not. It’s hard and expensive. Not everyone has the resources (read money and time) Google has, and that’s why companies like Brightcove are trying to capitalize on this problem.
Most importantly, HTML5 currently has no universal DRM solution. That is why Flash Player’s RTMPE, and soon HTTP Streaming via Project Zeri, are the de-facto standard today. Those who deploy video content they either own or license the rights to will not utilize HTML5 because it cannot be protected. There is a reason you rent videos in iTunes using their ACC format vs. straight H264. Legally, those videos CANNOT be utilized via HTML5.
Also, Hulu.com and others aren’t using H264, they’re using On2’s VP6.
Lie #4: “users aren’t missing much video.”
Every time a user see’s a blue lego instead of the video they wanted to see, they are missing a video. There were so many people seeing the blue lego, including Steve Jobs himself on stage demoing the iPad, that they removed the blue lego as a PR effort to make it seem like there was something wrong with the website itself vs. the iPhone/iPad.
…thankfully, Grant Skinner added it back.
Lie #5: “…Flash has recently added support for H.264…”
Incorrect. It’s been there since August of 2007. That’s almost 3 years. That’s a long time in technology.
Lie #6: “…must be run in software…”
Not entirely correct. Apple FINALLY gave Adobe and others access to hardware for desktop systems, which Adobe has recently utilized. The #1 criticism for Mac’s & Flash video is lack of hardware acceleration. This move by Apple will go a long way to improving video experiences, not just for Flash, for browser based video. Meaning, cooler Macs and more battery life.
For mobile, Safari/WebKit is using H264 hardware decoding just fine. They just won’t expose it, forcing yet again, Flash to utilize a sub par video experience for iPhone (having to launch a URL to utilize the iPhone’s default video player vs. incorporating the video into the experience).
Lie #7: “…When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all…”
See #3. Also, not all Flash video is just a video block on a page. Some are immersive experiences, games, or involved in compositing with other objects (alpha channels, easier particle systems, etc). HTML5 does not currently support some of these features.
Finally, not all video is pre-recorded and progressive. Live and streamed events are currently done using Flash Player and Silverlight. Yes, I’ve seen systems that can do live H264 via progressive with only seconds latency over CDN’s, regardless, they aren’t what’s being used en masse today. This includes DVR like functionality that both technologies offer, including Adative Streaming capabilities to ensure you can see un-interrupted video regardless of your internet connections’s integrity.
Lie #8: “…Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers…”
Incorrect. The whole reason Flash Player has continued to stay ahead of the curve is because Macromedia/Adobe innovates it. There are gesture & touch API’s in the Flash Player; I and many others have used them for the iPhone resulting in a 100+ apps on the App Store.
Lie #9: “For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot.”
Incorrect. This was already discounted 2 months ago by Mike Chambers. Additionally, I tested both MouseEvent.CLICK, MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, and MouseEvent.ROLL_OVER, and all 3 worked just fine on my iPhone. Additionally, I’ve seen video of a Nexus One using the native Flash Player 10.1 that plays a Flex website I made just fine with no code changes to support touch.
Lie #10: “Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover.”
Incorrect. There are roll over states for buttons on the iPhone/iPad because you can click/touch on something, which shows the roll over state, but then drag off to not trigger the up, thus canceling your button click if you didn’t meant to touch something. Works the exact same way as a mouse does.
Lie #11: “Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.”
Incorrect, see Mike Chambers’ post in #9.
Lie #12: “If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?”
Those same JavaScript Developers need to do the same work Flash Developers need to do: Nothing.
If both wish to utilize Gesture or Touch events, then BOTH need to re-write/adjust their content to support these events.
Lie #13: “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.”
Incorrect. See #3. Media companies will have to create players like Netflix did to support those devices; these aren’t HTML5, they’re Cocoa.
Half-Truth #1: “Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.”
iTunes, flagship Apple software product enabling the success of the iPod, selling over 1 billion songs, and empowering digital movie rentals, isn’t Cocoa.
Gruber, the same guy who Apple apparently used as an example of why Flash doesn’t belong on the iPhone, was quoted, when referring to why Apple hasn’t ported iTunes to Cocoa:
What really matters are features and user experience, not the developer technologies used to make them.
Conclusions
I agree with everything else the article says. While the spin is HTML5 is better than Flash, Apple wants you developing with Cocoa, not HTML5; that’s where the money and good user experiences are. While many have said that the PR person responsible for writing that article is doing Apple a disservice, I disagree. Yes, they do lose creditability writing that many lies, and yes, this just fuels the fire for many developers, not just Flash Devs, to focus on Android instead of iPhone.
However, iPhones and iPads still rock. While Apple is “only the 10th” largest phone manufacturer, they are the only mobile platform people care about right now in the USA (unless you’re a pissed off Flash/Flex Dev). Their app store, combined with the user experience, is un-matched.
Me? I’m still trying to learn Cocoa so I too can participate in building applications for these wonderful devices; devices whose sales won’t be hurt by that article. My colleagues in the industry? Most are heading towards Android along with Adobe. Those moonlighting in Flash & iPhone development simultaneously don’t say much, beyond correcting & helping me with my Objective C knowledge on Twitter (y’all rock!).
…oh yeah, and someone cast Cure 2 on Adobe.
WSJ interview with Adobe's CEO:
http://blogs.wsj.com...e-ceo/?mod=e2tw
Generally speaking, Steve Jobs is much too arrogant as usual, and there is absolutely no justification to go such lengths to get Flash off their platform. It really annoys me that this is picking up significant news headlines and it's just one guy being a ***** about some software. If the user wants Flash on the iPhone, so be it. If not, then don't install it. We don't need someone to tell us what we can have and cannot have on a device I own.
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