Vendetta against Jobs...
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- ideaist
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/02…
I like Steve Jobs and what he's done for technology and the "nerds are the new jocks" movement but this shit head is causing a lot of trouble these days with his anti-flash rants.
This has finally trickled down to me because when I pitch to a client who doesn't want to use flash because "iPad's won't support it" or "I can't see it on my iPhone".
I'm asking y'all, what can we do to counter his arguments? as a community and as the creative industry, how do we tell him what we require of his products and not allow him to tell us what we can use and be forced to adjust accordingly.
- ideaist0
I toyed with the idea of including this in the "Death of Flash" thread but this is intended more as a "Flash Lives (& Flourishes)" thread.
- noneck0
In 1999 I taught myself Flash 3 and wrote a manual for it in college. In 2001 I was doing some pretty crazy stuff with Flash 4 and Generator on an enterprise-level application.
Today I might open up Flash once every three months. Flash has some pretty painful limitations, and while there are some really amazing things it can do, Flash is very rarely required for most websites.
If you're doing something pretty clever and amazing that does require Flash, it shouldn't be too hard to convince the client to go with that option. Otherwise it's probably not necessary.
Here's a great essay on the whole issue: http://daringfireball.net/2010/0…
The part that got me was that Flash is a hugely prevelant technology, and it's proprietary and closed source. Adobe controls it completely, and I wouldn't want to get too reliant on that sort of technology. In this case, I think Adobe is the new Microsoft.
- Well played on Adobe is the new Microsoft; I concur... Apple is just thinking ahead then?ideaist
- They usually are. They killed the floppy, turned us on to Firewire, and made touch screens fun.monospaced
- hellogrid0
Your client has a point.
- ukit0
I think a lot of us got started with Flash but you gotta keep an open mind. The principles and knowledge that you developed with Flash can be applied to any number of formats, there's no special magic sauce that Adobe inserted into Flash that other technologies don't have.
I'm not saying it's dead but let things play out, if people develop better solutions I'm all for it.
- are you willing to learn 5 solutions to do something that 1 can already do however?tOki
- Counterpoint: Are you willing to learn 1 solution that is only supported by a fraction of devices?dMullins
- I've already learned way more than five.ukit
- also tOki, there will be HTML5 IDEs which work in much the same way as Flashkingsteven
- DrBombay0
I am loving the demos of the html5 video players. Look at how much less of your CPU is used to stream a video and you can see the benefit. The thing I think about is what else can it do? If you are doing animation in any of your work I think that Flash will still be around for that. Many articles I read talk about html5 as being the Flash killer. I guess is Flash was only being used to stream video. Maybe I am wrong though.
- If flash was built into the browser like html is, it would probably shit all over it.tOki
- wtf tOki? if my dick was built in to the browser, i could slap you round the face for such mootnesskingsteven
- i <3 Flash though :-Dkingsteven
- ukit0
This guy hits the nail on the head
- ideaist0
To avoid redirection from almightly QBN:
But today, using HTML5/Canvas for rich clients instead of Flash is no option either as it is not widely adopted by the browsers yet. You would end up in browser hell again. So what can you do as a Flash Developer to solve this situation in the next years? I think it depends on the type of project you are creating:
If you create one of these F W A CPU burners: Don’t care at all, make it full Flash as always. Nobody could enjoy it on a mobile device anyway because of the smaller screen size. Wear your blue lego shirt with pride! ;)
If you build a video/audio player, a slideshow or interactive charts: Use the Progressive Enhancement technique. Build a Canvas/JavaScript/CSS-based solution and implement a switch to replace it at runtime with a Flash version, if the browser doesn’t support the tags you’re using. Yes, that means extra work, but you can tell your client that he gets an “iPad version” for free! He will love it.
If you develop games: Most Flash games can’t be simply ported to mobile devices, even if they run Flash Player. That’s because you have different input controls. You don’t have a keyboard on the iPhone for example (btw: HTML5 games like this one suffer from the same problem). So you have to decide which platform you want to build for anyway. Or try to design your game to work without a keyboard and mouse over gestures etc. In that case you can hopefully run it on Android with the upcoming 10.1. player and probably port it to the iPhone as a standalone app with the upcoming Flash CS5 exporter.
If you develop a regular website: Try not to use Flash at all. Especially don’t use Flash only because you can. I did that a lot in the past and instantly regretted it when the Eee PC and the iPhone came out. If you have to integrate media content that can only be displayed on IE with Flash, use Progressive Enhancement. It’s the only way to ensure a good experience across all devices and browsers without creating a special version for each platform.
- tOki0
Apple has good products, yes - but are they THAT good? No, not really, they just have good marketing - some of the best there is. Just find the penetration rates of the jesus phone in the overall mobile market worldwide - you will see they aren't that high. Furthermore, compare that to how many people will be looking at said website on a computer. You will find that the iphone has an even smaller share.
The people at fault are really the populists who jump on the bandwagon without truly understanding the discussion. All the fanboys and media outlets who seem to think Jobs is the next messiah.
Jobs likes to ignore that macromedia and now adobe have created a 99% penetrated platform on the worlds internet connected computers. He's purposely not letting the platform onto these devices because of pure greed to make mega bucks out of the app store. He knows that if he let an open platform such as flash on there people would create all kinds of things and worst of all make them free! This is what I hate about Apple. They do their best to own everything you do with their products. In many ways worse than microsoft...
- How many mobile devices support Flash, regardless of manufacturer?noneck
- You're right about Apple wanting to control apps through the store, but I would hardly call Flash "open".noneck
- it's not about being open source, its about being able to build anything you want without oversighttOki
- adobe has released mobile flash for years, whether or not manfacturers do it well is up to them. Same goes for java!tOki
- the app store is full of free appsESKEMA
- dMullins0
Flash is great for some shit, some very specific shit. But in the end, do I want to watch some bad ass site on an iPhone. No, I don't, and neither do most people. Most of the outcry I have read the past months is from Flash developers purely.
- he's right in a way.... on a small screen, you just want it to work, forget all the bouncing shit....vaxorcist
- kult0
dMull, Flash is great for a lot more than "very specific" shit.
Don't forget that Flash is FAR more than just a format. It's an entire content creation system. It's an IDE. An animation tool. It's a package and environment firmly rooted in an entire industry.
Everyone is forgetting some major issues here. HTML5 is simply a standard. It has ZERO bearing on quality control or implementation.
Think of how much of a headache it is ensuring cross-compatibility in non Flash experiences. It's a nightmare already for developers. Now compound it with all of the "bells and whistles" that people are prematurely assigning to HTML5, and you've got a clusterfuck.
Playing embedded videos, for example, now falls upon the individual browsers to implement. Do you actually think Safari, Firefox, IE, Chrome (etc) are all going to use the exact same video-implementation method? Nope. They're all going to render video their own way - you know, the behind the scenes shit. HTML5 standard has nothing to do with a browser's internal ability to execute and render. Meanwhile, Flash for most intents and purposes, runs exactly the same no matter where its embedded. That's the beauty, and the point of it. No squabbling to create a basic tween animation that works exactly the same on 3 browsers.
HTML5, for all intents and purposes, hasn't even left the ground yet. Fuck, people are still bitching about IE6! And even when it does, rigth now there is zero industry-standard content creation software that will enable programmers, animators, designers, and hybrids to develop robust experiences as well as Flash does. It's going to take a LOT to move this shit forward.
MUCH more than an iPhone and iPad.
At 99% penetration, Flash is so far from dead that this debate becomes laughable.
Also, I'd just like to mention that anyone who thinks "annoying ads" will go by the wayside if Flash does -- you've got another thing coming. Try thinking this through. If HTML5 can 'replace' Flash, then it can fuck adspace up just as well. Read up on Canvas alone.
Changing toolsets & environments carries with it any of your current biases against Flash.
- monospaced0
I'm assuming there is a phone out there that does support Flash. Otherwise the nerd elite wouldn't be endlessly bitching and moaning about it. If there isn't such a phone, what's all the fuss about the iPhone not supporting it?
- What phone does support Flash? I really don't know.monospaced
- See down a few posts.tOki
- monospaced0
I'll answer my own question; wasn't hard to find the answer.
http://it-chuiko.com/computers/2…
- _niko0
scary and funny, but mostly scary
- tOki0
The document below lists 360 mobile phones that support flash lite in some way:
- ckentish0
Flash has never performed well on Apple products - weird and I don't have any idea why
- I think Apple are the lazy ones, not Adobe. Suck it, Jobs!ifeltdave
- It doesnt perform well in Apple products cause Apple wont let them access some hardware stuff: http://www.crunchgea…twistedfork
- inv0
Funny how lots of people complain when companys keep software and their formats closed. While when another compay decides to encourage the opposite, they still bitch about it!
- obsolete0
I wonder if adobe just discontinued photoshop for the Mac....