Sticking with Flash

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  • SteveJobs0

    ^ good points. however, i think it's important to remember who is actually challenging the relevancy of flash these days. it's really two different parties:

    1) Steve Jobs/Apple: their intentions are pretty clear for the most part as to why they want to avoid the technology on their mobile devices, whether their arguments hold any water or not. It's still very much a part of their OS X-basd Safari, however, and will remain that way.

    2) Web Developers. And not just any web developers; front end developers. Particularly the ones who got burned by Adobe when they went OO on everyone in as3. Also those who favor the tools (ajax, jquery, javascript, etc) they already know and understand and don't want to have to learn a new and more complicated technology.

    i'm generalizing, of course. there are other parties who perhaps dislike the techology, maybe a few end users who's browsers crashed because of a badly written as3 code. also, the open source community, etc. but these voices have little effect to the outcome of the technology in the big picture, i think.

    having said all that, i do think the relevance of flash *could* shift with the advent of html5 particularly within the context of video and ads. however, considering the fact that the technology has been around since 2004, it's taking a considerable amount of time to get enough momentum to rally all browser developers to commit to these standards and as a result, IE has barely any support for html5 even using excanvas, and even firefox has problems running some of the popular html5 demos and games. i think once the standard is finalized and everyone jumps on board, html5 will complement flash quite well and possibly (read: hopefully) reduce the need for the plug-in in some of those cases where it would be otherwise overkill.

    • not even sure why i posted this. i'm so tired of this topic, i really don't care at all. :)SteveJobs
    • I dunno - it's at least as relevant as turtles or how Lost endedukit
  • gabe0

    not sure if it's relevant anymore, but my thoughts _

    http://www.gaberubin.com/death_o…

  • ukit0

    Walt: So you just woke up one morning and heard about Android?

    Steve: Kinda.

    Walt: So do you feel betrayed?

    Steve: My sex life is pretty good. How's yours?

    Kara: Don't ask.

  • ukit0

    The last one of these was pretty entertaining.

    • that was a quick and humorous answer from Jobseieio
    • sheeputopian
  • ukit0

    Steve Jobs will be interviewed at the "D8" conference this afternoon so I'm sure he will be forced to talk about the Flash issue.

    http://d8.allthingsd.com/2010060…

  • Miguex0

    and:

    they need to get their shit together or htc will eat them alive

    • AT&T not ApplePIZZA
    • It's a victim of it's own popularityPIZZA
    • good observation detective :)Miguex
  • BannedKappa0

    • this is just fucking childish adobe.sherm
    • or just stating a factformed
    • Letting folks not in the loop understand why they can't get the plugin.ETM
  • instrmntl0

    I'm a mac person. Macbook, iPhone, and G5. I'll always love macs. That being said, they don't run as good as pcs. I had a sony cellphone 3 years ago that took 2mb photos with a flash. iPhones still dont have a flash. They have weaker technology to balance their slimmer, modern aesthetic. While I appreciate their design, their products suck. Flash doesn't work well on iPhones and iPads because theyre both a piece of shit, technology wise.

    • Goes to show you how much you can get away with good IA and design.instrmntl
    • most smartphones don't have a flash. macs basically is the same hardware as a pc nowadays. what is your point?kpl
  • ukit0

  • SteveJobs0

    yeah, i agree with sherm. i'm getting sick of this too. we've gone back and forth on this issue and debated every point and i'm really not sure who's trying to convince who of what any more.

    for those who are anti-flash, are you trying to save the futures of those who have so much vested in the technology already to get them to 'see the light' so hopefully they're not made redundant any longer? do you really care to convince everyone that their plug-in technology is dated, slow, and a resource hog? is it important to remind everyone how apple game them their chance time and again?

    for the pro-flash folks, your career's are probably safe, but it wouldn't hurt to learn some html5 for that one glorious day when *all* browsers support it. and let's just get over the fact that apple won't let anyone create apps with anything other than xcode and cocoa. it's their choice to make and their obviously content with it. the language is simple enough to pick up. yeah, you're gonna spend a couple months porting something that you should have just been able to cross-compile, but fuck it - it's jobs security and you've learned a new skillset.

    it's just my opinion, but there's still a lot to be seen still from these big corporations and how their decision will sway the industry. in spite of the impressive ipad sales reported (2 million in the last two months i think?) i think it's too early to tell what impact jobs' decision will have on flash, so let's just sit back and chill the fuck out, ok?

    • yea mofos act like ipads and iphones etc are dictating whats applicable for the rest of the web. so unilateral...sherm
  • sherm0

    kind of getting sick of this fucking debate already. how about:
    use it if u feel like, OR don't use it if u don't want to fucking use it because there are other options...

  • ukit0

    Consider this though, on Jan 27 Adobe writes this post, "iPad - A Broken Link:"

    http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplat…

    pointing out that "there's something important missing"

    Then, 4 months later...

    http://www.itpro.co.uk/622504/ad…

    "Eager testers can sign up to try out the first betas of Flash Player 10.1 and Air 2.0, Adobe said today, as its chief executive admitted the software had been delayed until the second half of the year."

    Yeah, no shit there was "something missing"...they hadn't built it yet LOL

    I mean, yeah sure Jobs' opposition to Flash goes beyond that but it makes the initial post about lack of Flash on the iPad kind of silly.

    • I think Adobe could create an amazing touch screen platform if they had Apple's cooperation.hotroddy
    • That's a load of crap, Adobe had plenty of time to do it. "The onus is now on us" http://www.readwrite…ukit
    • Jobs wants all the money he can getPixter
  • PonyBoy0

    just curious... if flash is so shitty... why does it run so nicely on PC's?

    I opened my old laptop PC that's over 6 years old now... I even had to upgrade the flash player - Windows xp... 32 bit setup... smoooooooth... fassst... ... yuuuuuuum.

    Lately on my Mac - Flash has literally seemed to slow down 'even more' than I've noticed in the past.

    Also - when I'm developing flash on my Mac... I SWEAR it's gotten a bit choppy and is difficult to work with sometimes. Things take longer to happen / update... ... but ONLY in flash... ... not in photoshop / illy etc... ... ... I think it's a conspiracy... the recent Apple updates have code that tells our lil Macs to forsake the Flash... ... to treat it like a ginger...

    ... I love Flash... ...Mr. Jobs... please stop being such a retarded fag.

    *returns to reading iPhone dev. tutorial

    • *is drinking... feels bad about calling him a fagPonyBoy
    • hahahaukit
    • You should e-mail that to himukit
    • what Pony said...utopian
  • ukit0

    You guys are so negative. Did you ever consider that the fact that no one has even released a touch screen tablet to compete with Apple means that it's a pretty difficult technological challenge?

    Arstechnica had a look at the state of Android tablets here:

    http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/n…

    Those demos, the ones dealing with <canvas> and other graphics experiments are showcasing the limits of what's possible with HTML5. In the cases where they are specifically optimized for mobile, I think you'll find they do work on iPad, like this for instance:

    http://jilion.com/sublime/video

    • tablets have been around for year man, what the hell are you even talking aboutMiguex
    • according to wikipedia they been around for over 9 yearsMiguex
    • People call lots of things a tablet...those earlier ones were much more like scaled down laptopsukit
    • This kind of lightweight touch screen device that runs a phone OS is pretty differentukit
  • hotroddy0

    @georgesIII I couldn't find any working HTML5 demos on ipad either.
    Some even went as far as crashing the browser. Couldn't help but think of comments made from people here that Flash is the leading cause of Safari crashes (which lead to it's omission on ipad). Thanks to Jobs and HTML5, looks like flash won't hold this title for very long.

  • Hombre_Lobo0

    me too dasmeteor...me too.

  • dasmeteor0

    I hate Steve Jobs.

  • formed0

    We'll just have to see how the competition does, as they will have Flash.

    I am interested to see how the HP pad-thing does and how Dell's Streak does. I am praying they come to market with the functionality that is necessary to compete (unlike the iPhone's competition, first round, that looked pretty embarrassing imho, but this time they know what they are up against, nothing new on the iPad).

    I wanna love Apple's devotion to great design, but without any functionality, it is just a fancy movie watcher (to me and my clients, anyway, and even then I can't watch the videos we make for clients as they are all Flash based when online, that ain't changing anytime soon!)

  • ukit0

    There's also the issue of optimizing Flash for mobile

    "You often hear people talking about the idea of developing once and deploying to every device. That sounds nice but it isn’t realistic. The real story is that you can create 80% of your application once, and then spend the remaining 20% of your time creating UIs that work well on the various devices. For instance, mobile devices obviously do not have as much horsepower as your quad-core tower. So once you get Flash Player 10.1 on your phone, don’t go to the F W A and expect those sites to run like they do on your desktop. Because of that you will need to do a lot of optimizations that you wouldn’t ordinarily worry about with desktop Flash. The UI of your application will also have to be optimized for smaller screens and will have to be touch-friendly, meaning not relying on things like roll over."

  • ukit0

    Right...except that after years of missed deadlines, Flash 10.1 finally became available this month as a beta release.

    How was Apple supposed to put it on the iPhone/ iPad again?

    • Maybe you can send Michael J. Fox back in time with a copy of Flash and we can all be happyukit