“Adobe’s Flash technology has ben taking a beating lately.”

From Apple fans, no-one else really gives a shit.

Like with all new technologies…time will tell

Does anyone there use flash on a Mac? Forget the iPad and all that, Macs alone are reason enough to move to HTML5

How does html5 “replace” flash?

it doesnt but it offers a viable alternative to stream video, you can try this now, think youtube have a html5 player with some limitations

Both Android and the Palm Pre are plagued w/ battery life issues (made significantly worse when viewing Flash on the device), and from what’s been put out there even from the Firefox team, Flash Light is not ready for prime time. Adobe needs to put out something stronger than a blog post in order to satisfy developers like Firefox.

I use Flash on a mac… it crashes on certain apps, but what does that have to do with Flash? A poorly written app will crash even if it is written in Objective-C, Actionscript or any name you want to throw in here…

Flash is not being supported clearly for being a treat to the App Store.

I think a smart move for Adobe would be to continue to leverage its community of designers and developers. Further enable them to produce AJAX/HTML 5/iPhone/.swf/whatever by augmenting the CS authoring tools to export to those formats. Perhaps the days of the Flash Player may be numbered, but if competing technologies have similar capabilities to the Flash Player, then why not export to those as well?

“but HTML5 is advancing faster and as a native Web standard it has many other advantages which may help it win over time.”

Erick, have your kept up-to-date on the HTML 5 development process and more to the point what exactly it will allow. It’s several years behind, is lead by Apple and Google engineers and does not guarantee unified video across all platforms or media.

So Kevin Lynch is that wrong in his assertion that it could actually be a step backwards to think that HTML5 will in the near term come anyway close to replace Flash as a media player in browsers.

I believe it uses a browser-based codec to decode embedded video, regardless of the video format. The issue Flash-man brings up is that different browsers are currently supporting different codecs, all of which or HTML5 compliant. Safari supports H.264, Firefox does not, Chrome looks to be moving to OGG, etc.

I do think, given the age of this standard, that the parties will settle on one. And then the days of Flash will be numbered for video.

Someone else have a better description?

HTML5 will enable embedding videos simply by using the tag. You can check out YouTube’s “demo” of YouTube in HTML5 @ http://www.youtube.com/html5 or see more demos here:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sublimevideo_demoing_the_future_of_html5_video.php
Of course the authority on this is at w3.org so I do recommend hoping over there and reading up.

I’m flash developer but I think video should just be video rendered natively in the browser, so without any crashes prone flash layer.. let flash be there for the apps and games etc.
And adobe should really make a better flash plugin for the mac, compared to a the windows plugin it feels like it was written in 1999 :-)

Um… I am using a Dell right now and I run into Flash errors fairly consistantly. Not in video playback usually. It happen mostly in ads and interfacing loading. Same on my Mac.

Smug and wrong are not a pretty combination.

Apple banned Flash from the iPhone before they ever decided to do an App Store. So what does this have to do with the App Store?

Everyone else is using Adblock or ClicktoFlash to avoid Flash, so yes, no-one else really gives a shit (about Flash).

And you think the App Store was thought after the iPhone launch?

the thing about HTML5 is the it’s open some if there is a bug or missing feature many people can contribute and no one needs to wait for “lazy Adobe” to fix anything.
there are many things i don’t like about the iPad but no flash support is not one of them.

its innovate or die for flash, they still have a bright future but it’ll be precarious path, one slip and they’ll gone for good.

But doesn’t owning a Mac make you an Apple fan? It has worked fine on all Windows machines for me. Maybe because I have no Mac.

My shockwave flash plug in is crashing everyday on Google chrome and Microsoft internet explorer 7-8

Not certain. I own a Pontiac but it doesn’t make me a Pontiac “fan”.

And if you read my post you’d see that it happens on my Dell laptop too. I also have a Toshiba laptop and an eMachine desktop… tell me… does that make me a Windows “fan”?

Thanks for the link. I checked out a few YouTube vids in HTML5 (using Chrome). They were pretty pixellated, and full-screen doesn’t work yet. Not sure if this is due to multiple format conversions, restrictions placed by Google or the underlying technology. Any ideas?

I really don’t understand what kind of errors people get by using flash. I have ever recieved any errors by using flash. Maybe their isn’t anything wrong with flash its with our own system or some other software that conflicts with it? Lets have a poll and see how many people have problems with flash.

It all comes down to the flavor of codec.

The problem being there is no common codec for HTML5.

See http://tech.icrontic.com/news/no-common-video-codec-for-html5

HTML5 video won’t compete with Flash video until it’s in IE (which they won’t happen) or Firefox supports H.264 (which they won’t happen).

No video website that wants to make money is going to use Ogg/Vorbis or ignore IE.

@Paul Chapel: “Everyone else is using Adblock or ClicktoFlash to avoid Flash, so yes, no-one else really gives a shit (about Flash).”

Except for that fact they are using third-party software to avoid it.

Is that really your closing argument?

how come i ever get crashed on my explorer 7 or chrome or firefox.

It’s great that Adobe is finally under pressure … Flash Player on Mac is indeed constantly either slowing down the browser or crashing it.

But even worse … have a look at the Creative Suite. Literally every app is full of obvious bugs (save for web in Photoshop is *great* fun).

The introduction of Flash to the user interfaces of Photoshop, etc. might have done development easier at Adobe but the user experience is awful. Neither does it feel like a native interface (e.g. number inputs) nor is it consistent across the different apps.

The fact that there is a blog just about that http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/ at least makes me not the only one facing these issues during my everyday work …

Yes, I do. Especially since Steve Jobs rejected the idea of third party apps when he was asked about it after the iPhone launch.

You still haven’t answered my question though. What does Flash have to do with the App Store?

Yes, Apple initially never had intentions on allowing third party application development. They began with trying to push mobile applications but we saw how that worked out.

Fair points. Sorry about the Pontiac.

The drama keeps going – http://twitpic.com/1114pb

I average at least 2 crashes a day due to Flash (normal Youtube videos), particularly when trying to watch an HD video. No matter the video though my CPU always spikes to 80-100% which is absurd. And no, it’s not my system, it’s flash.

With the Flash vs HTML5 issues aside, I think the price Adobe puts on its Creative Suite is setting us against them. It’s terrible…why won’t they at least do a 3yr deal for startup developers trying to use it do more with less? No! They have to gouge everyone. Just look at the enormous profits Adobe makes. I won’t soon forget.

Today kids we learn the word, “bias”.
/b’aɪəs/
a particular tendency or inclination, esp. one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice

No, it makes you a Mac owner. You apparently have Windows machines, does that automatically make you a Windows fan?

The only thing I worried about when adobe bought macromedia was continued innovation and development. If Adobe rest on the success of flash and don’t keep innovating, something will inevitably take over. The best defense Adobe can mount for flash is to keep up innovation with the product…

“Adobe supports HTML5, but its incompatibilities across browsers spells doom for the Web.”

I think he’s missing the point.

HTML5 is about a lot more than just web-video for one, and second the push for HTML5 is also part of a broader effort to force some standardization across browsers.

Back in the early days of the web, developers and content providers had to bend over backwards and find solutions like Flash to take care of the differences in web browsers.

As the internet has grown and become much larger that has become increasingly difficult to do and it’s a model that doesn’t scale as more and more new technologies and uses for the web appear on the radar.

Furthermore, unlike the early days of the web… modern browsers have all (except IE) evolved around open standards in support of IE. With some of the efforts Google, Apple, and others are making towards HTML5 and a Flash-free world I think you’ll see fewer browser specific issues.

Google’s recent announcement that they are no longer supporting IE6 should be evidence of the new direction the web is taking.

This is more than a fight over technology formats, this is the last days of a raging battle that’s been going on for years to finally get rid of all the old arcaeic browsers the past and finally modernize the web.

The need for Adobe’s product and the reason for their market share is dated and only exists because of the mistakes and lack of standards from the start of web.

EVERYONE who is creating new content for the web these days is trying to correct those “sins of the past” through robust open standards like HTML5, WebKit, and GWT and as a result, the need for Adobe’s product is dwindling very fast.

HTML5 is inevitable. If Flash is going to stick around, Adobe needs to carve out a new reason for it to stay. The web is evolving and we don’t need or want to install a long menu of plug-ins to use it.

whooooosh right over Long’s forehead.

I think it makes you a Mac fan. Why else would you pay more? Most people get PC’s with windows because it’s cheaper, it’s what they already know, and it is the default. Sort of like Pontiac. Mac is more analagous to BMW. Why would pay more if you aren’t a fan?

Open source Flash and make it a companion to Web Kit before it’s too late!

Steve jobs is a meanie calling Adobe lazy lol

Can’t they just release it for jailbroken iphone?

It’s been a long time and i’m sure the product is ready, the jailbreak community is used to experimental products that don’t “just work”, give me flash in browser so i can watch videos from websites other than Youtube and finally have the whole web in my pocket and I won’t really care if it crashes once a day…

Please ADOBE contact SAURIK @ CYDIA or the guys from ROCK….

Can’t they just release it for jailbroken iphone?

It’s been a long time and i’m sure the product is ready, the jailbreak community is used to experimental products that don’t “just work”, give me flash in browser so i can watch videos from websites other than Youtube and finally have the whole web in my pocket and I won’t really care if it crashes once a day…

Please ADOBE contact SAURIK @ CYDIA or the guys from ROCK….

Flash for smartphones runs on Blackberry? Huh?

In Video only you mean, Flash had already been there even before video streaming

Well said Brandon

Because I develop with Flash, run the debug Flash player. It is simply amazing how many adverts and/or sites have fatal code errors. (The debug version will give you a window with the listing dump.) Perhaps Flash should handle these more elegantly when someone writes code that crashes. Maybe HTML 5 will handle fatal bugs better. My sense is that Flash is the worst offender right now because it is the RIA that is used most for complex code. Once the shift for writing complex RIA apps or adverts shifts to HTML 5 happens, people will be complaining about HTML 5. I’m not following HTML 5 much right now. Does it have something that will keep poorly written code from affecting the browser??

BTW: Techcrunch for soooo long had Flash errors generated every page at their site. Not sure if it was an ad, or poorly written site code. FInally has been fixed. Thanks to whomever did this. (Given the regularity of the error, methinks it was a TC error.)

It is easy to see how Flash undermines the entire app store. Apple wants to be the moral gate keeper for every program that runs on the device and wants to collect a toll for every program sold. It does not want any other way for a program to be run on the device. Clearly, having Flash and/or AIR equivelent on the device could completely destroy that ecosystem. There are millions of Flash programmers who could write their apps for the iPad/iPhone/iTouch and sell them however they wanted and wherever they wanted, and not have to pay Apple. Whether or not the App Store was thought about before or after Apple banned Flash does not matter. Apple still wanted 100% control and could clearly see the threat Flash posed.

I just don’t get it.most people who I know(I mean normal people not geek)…..they don’t even know adblock or ClicktoFlash exist.

I have macs, and have used them for 5 years or so. I’m a web designer, and use flash cs3 on my macbook. Never had any issues online or in development. Mobile wise though, my iphone lacks the player which sucks, but there are always other options.

i also experience my fair share of flash crashes. historically, open standards have prevailed on the internet and i’m confident that a occam’s razor will prevail. html5 is not a replacement for flash, but it is definitely a replacement for flash video.

That’s right~

I despise Flash. If you use multiple browsers, Flash will not work on all of them. For example, when I install Flash in I.E. it ceases working in Firefox or Chrome, when I install it in Chrome, then it no longer works in I.E. Adobe claims it’s a problem in my Windows setup, MS claims it’s a problem in Flash, etc. Flash is the only thing that periodically hard-locks my PC so that I have to press the reset button. Again, Adobe blames my videocard, but I can play DirectX games for hours on end and those are far more demanding than Flash. As a user vs. a hard-core tekkie I hope Flash goes the way of the dodo.

Because even if the App Store was an afterthought it is still a control mechanism for software on the platform.

Flash allows apps not controlled by Apple to run on their devices.

This is reinforced by Steve Jobs not wanting 3rd party developers of any sort at launch.

My two cents on that:

“Due to performance problems using Adobe Flash within Firefox on many websites, especially those with multiple plug-ins on them, we have disabled plugins for Firefox for Maemo 1.0. ” – Firefox for Nokia N900 Release Notes.

http://www.clipfish.de – most popular video site in germany – has a mobile version for iPhone – without any need for flash.

“To play the game use keys “k”, “j” and space bar” – touch devices like the iPhone or iPad don’t have concept of mouse-over or key press events.

The above argument is identical to: All the browsers will settle on a single rendering engine and the days of HTML standard incompatibility will be over.

OR: all users will standardize on a single OS.
and so on and on..

From a developers standpoint, Flash does indeed provide a reasonable similar experience across browsers and OSes which is a huge win for them.

I’m running a Windows 7 PC, a Windows 7 netbook, and a Windows XP laptop and, while I have had Flash crash in the past (haha, I can rhyme!) I haven’t seen any errors in several iterations of the software (I’d say I’ve been “Flash error free” for at least 3 years now).

While I am sure that such errors do exist – all software can break given specific circumstances – I am not sure as to what capacity they exist. What are the errors? How do they originate? Are they reproducible? Is your hardware or software configuration the problem or is it actually Flash?

How far away are we from seeing HTML 5 on the www?

So? Fine, it’s a tag, but even then you’re using a codec instead of a plugin. Not a huge difference IMO except the codec is bundled as part of the browser but still comes from a 3rd party.

If Flash is allowed then a large portion of developers will simply create Flash apps, similar to most of current native apps, with alternate distribution mechanisms and Steve would not get his 30% fee which he gets from App Store.

kapish/comprende/clear/ …

How can so many people defend a company or a standard that has such a big monopoly on web video content?

Doesn’t anybody find it strange that 1 company has control over 75% of the internet video env. ?

You think it should be like that? 1 company to have THAT much power/control?

If it would be one reason to “cheer” for HTML5′s tag is simply to have some serious competition against flash…competition between companies is always good for the end user.

The underlying codecs will still come form somewhere, if it is up to Apple and Google, who want proprietary H.264 as opposed to Mozilla who wants to standardize on Theodora.

So, it’s now like that if there is a bug anyone can open and fix it.

Moreover, Steve would still have to provide low level access to these codecs, which I doubt he would.

So, HTML5 won’t fix anything.

+1!

That makes perfect sense!!! I dont understand how the readers of TC (I assume are mostly developers) blame just the flash player for the crashes and dont consider the fact that it is always the badly written code that causes the crash. All these so called developers, start using debug version of flash player and then you will understand whats actually going on!!!

Flash is like a bridge over a disappearing river.

Yes I think when Lynch was referring to agreeing on a format, he was talking about the codec problem.

It’s easy to hand wave and say “time will fix it”, but it is quite a thorny issue. H.264 is proprietary so will never be usable in the non-profit Mozilla Firefox. Also, it’s not really in any company’s interest to migrate to a common standard. Will Apple make Quicktime defunct for the greater good? Not likely.

Take audio codecs as an example, which are a little more mature. Rather than migration to a standard format, there’s now more audio file formats than ever.

If you had not mentioned I would have never known either.

Brandon, I agree with you 100%. However, here and now, we don’t have any mature authoring tool other than Flash for designers and animators to use (maybe someone could point me to a HTML5 animation tool?)

Many of our corporate clients are still stuck in IE6, and it will be years before we can see the support for HTML5. So stop using Flash is out of the question.

After Adobe bought Macromedia, Flash lost its focus and decided that it is more of a programming tool than an animation authoring tool. The average designers now just don’t get it.

“I think it makes you a Mac fan. Why else would you pay more?”
Steve ?
Steve Ballmer, is that you ? ^_^

He’s right though. Before Flash Video, internet video was a shit show. Real Player? Windows Media? Quicktime? WTF?! You had to install shitty spamware desktop apps just to get the browser plugin. It was horrible. Can you imagine YouTube built on Real Player? Horrible thought. The lack of a standard video codec in the HTML 5 spec means we’re back to the multiple format days of internet video.

I totally agree.

I develop in Flex/Flash/AIR. What sucks for developers isn’t the output format, it’s the lack of decent abstractions.

Adobe should make it simple for developers, but there aren’t enough samples, there’s too many libraries they expect you to count on that don’t ship with Flex, and there’s too much relatively low level stuff to deal with.

That said, Apple sucks for blocking Flash. There is relatively low strategic value for them to do this, and it really doesn’t server their CUSTOMERS well.

Flash is not the problem. The problem is with people who develop poor flash applications. You can find tons of flash content that will never crash, just because it’s written properly.

It’s your system. Not Flash

I’m running flash for years on different Windows pcs and never experienced problems or any CPU peaks at all.

Have to agree, their prices have been horribly high for far too long. They need competition to thrive, and haven’t had any for too long.

I’m not an Apple fan either for similar reasons, they both need to serve their communities better. Being petulant and pissy towards each other isn’t helping anyone.

Jobs, put Flash on the ‘i’s, Lynch, take a McDonald’s approach to all your products, you charge way too much. Then you will both profit and have happier customers.

It does matter to a lot of consumers. HTML5, Flash, Java, Silverlight, Objective C all have their place. The developer hysteria is getting a little ridiculous…

http://anthonyfranco.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/mass-confusion-the-hysteria-over-flash-silverlight-html-5-java-fx-and-objective-c/

Flash on cellphones is a mix blessing
i could see more websites, and video, but i would also be bombarded with annoying ads

Luckily Fennec will come to the rescue, Adblock is already working in fennec, and come its release on Droid, no more ads on the wireless browser.

The combo of Fennec, Adblock will be a great extra for phones.

Their price is reasonable. They charge $2000 for a product (CS3 Master Collection) and their users turn around and turn it into $2 million. These sames users really don’t have any reason to upgrade to CS4, 5 or 6. So that $2000 invested made them millions (over several years) and Adobe only saw $2000 (over the same time span).

However, that said, not everyone makes millions off of using Adobe products. Students, freelancers and small businesses, for example. So yeah, it seems expensive to them. How can you learn the tool if you can’t afford to buy it legally?

Forget what everyone says. Apple is not supporting Flash because Apple and Adobe are competitors. It’s as simple as that. Microsoft made Silverlight to compete with Adobe. Apple doesn’t have the market penetration to compete in the same way, so they are backing a different horse. What’s more – not supporting Flash actually facilitates the move away from it. Companies are starting to think twice now about including flash content because they know that some users will not be able to view it on their mobile (iPhone) devices.

You can talk about the technical aspects or the open web all you want, but this is just business. Apple wants to compete with Adobe without driving Adobe off their platform altogether.

Listen to last 2 week’s TWIT podcasts, kid. Flash blowz — it’s a CPU hog and crash machine.

HTML5 is the future — a much fast, and more stable future.

I pay more because as my primary (although older) PC the Mac just works. Almost everything is easier on it. And most of the things my family uses it for done with tightly integrated applications (iLife). It is more elegant in accomplishing the most mundane of tasks. That is subjective, I know.

The simply truth is that Mac and Windows PC are not the same. The OSs make them starkly different. It is something that people who see all PCs as toasters don’t seem to understand. I certainly understand they cost more. That’s why I own some Windows PCs. Depending on why I am buying a computer will determine which computer I am buying.

My daughters in college both have MacBooks. My wife has an iBook (about to go bye bye) and I have the two Windows laptops, and Mac and Windows desktops. And my wife and I both own iPhones (we had AT&T when they came out and haven’t had any issues with the service in Chicagoland).

I try to find the tool that fits my need. In the end, though, I always find myself going back to the Mac for stuff outside of surfing and email (creating stuff!). Just a preference, I guess. I doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

too bad flash 10.1 isn’t even on those devices yet. So you are mistaken.

LOL, Chris.

The only problem right now(regarding flash-free video on the web) is getting advertising and annotations in it.
Once Google solves this, I’ll be happy to see Flash removed from YouTube(they won’t use it fully until they can put ads inside the videos)

Other than that, flash will only remain for the kind of interactive-adverts and games like those you see on http://www.tudou.com/ (a chinese video site)

I’m no Flash fan but I’d take it over Java any day…let the flames begin :)

Why does Adobe not develop an OS based Flash Framework. And get in to competition with iPhone OS and Android?

Perfect solution.

I would say nearly all errors seen in Flash are code related where a developer was making assumptions about something and didn’t write code that would handle unexpected inputs. I would not be surprised at all if this is what Steve Jobs is speaking of. You see this in javascript all the time and safari on iphone still supports that.

Apple handles this by reviewing all the code that goes onto the phone. Adobe should review all code that goes onto the web!

Flash is just as incompatible sometimes as HTML5 which is still in the early stages of adoption …

If HTML5 can be considered a flash competitor, and Apple is pushing HTML5 … It would also be a competitor. So the Flash vs App Store argument makes no sense to me.

Adobe tried to charge for mobile Flash pre-April 2008 and this is part of what turned the tide against them.

Also does this figure about 75% of video on the web also include YouTube? Because it should be clear that iPhone OS has the ability to interpret embedded YouTube videos.

There is no reason to assume that HTML5 will be faster and stabler than Flash. You can write bad code in any development environment.

Another big issue will be that Kevin is absolutely correct that Adobe has a big advantage in being able to update the Flash plugin very quickly and across all browsers simultaneously. It’s going to be a total nightmare keeping the 4 or 5 major browsers running the same version of HTML5.x as updates are required. Good luck!

It’s also misguided to think that Flash is ONLY about video. I think people would be surprised at how much of their daily web experience is Flash driven…

Google Maps street view = Flash
SlideRocket & SlideShare = Flash
Google Finance = Flash
Flickr Slideshows = Flash
Playhouse Disney = Flash
Zynga Games = Flash
MySpace = Flash

Ultimately, i think the point that Apple is missing is that while HTML5 may become a player eventually – we are YEARS (if ever) from seeing Flash disappear from the web. I highly doubt the iPad will see enough traction to drive all these companies to reauthor huge swatches of their sites in HTML5 anytime soon…

Students can get CS4 with a large discount, saying that it’s still not exactly cheap.

Users don’t have a reason to upgrade to CS5 or 6 because they don’t exist (yet).

I think the more options the better for developers. Time will tell but Flash will be around for a while. They should be able to coexist pretty easily. Plus Since html5 video doesn’t need a plug-in who cares? to the end consumer it doesn’t change much as its free either way. Just get me my content and get it fast.

I agree if apple won’t play ball why not go to the competition?

Meh I read the first few comments then got bored as they all started to sound the same. All I know is that flash makes my computer run like crap as it maxes out my CPU and causes system instability as regular processes fight for life in the background. I hope HTML5 is somewhat less intensive.

Hell, i’ve got full screen 1920×1200 3D games that run smoother on my system than the average flash based website.

Somewhere between 2 and 12 years.

Around 2 for W3C Candidate Recommendation, and up to 12 or maybe more for full W3C Recommendation.

nonsense. any platform has it’s good and bad sides, flash is amazing tool for developing solid apps online, no HTML5 can change that in a day. and Apple are just being silly for having web enabled products that don’t support it.

Flash contains half a dozen video codecs.

Choosing a suitable codec is proving difficult in HTML5 because for many the best hope of a resolution, the Ogg Vorbis codec, *may* be subject to submarine patents (AKA future Patent Trolls)

It turns out that all video codecs are patent encumbered. With no royalty free codecs this issue isn’t looking resolvable in the near future.

So someone like to create a new audio & video codec and disclaim all IPR? Way to make yourself famous :-)

And Flash has no “standard” codec either. It contains half a dozen codecs.

Same here. I’m using a 2 year old Macbook Pro and Flash runs great. Never crashes and the CPU usage is tolerable. After all it has to render video which is intensive even for the Quicktime player running outside the browser. People don’t seem to understand that anything other than a static webpage needs processing power. 95% of the flash haters are exaggerating severely because their right on Jobs’ jock.

No reason browsers couldn’t include multiple codecs like Flash does. “Flash video” is not a codec. Flash contains half a dozen codecs.

Willing to bet you’re using the debugger flash player. That one generates lots of errors. Dump it and re-install the non-dev version and I bet your errors go away.

Agreed. Cogent analysis.

Flash is a widely embraced technology. Apple not supporting is obviously political. EOS.

Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera all have some of HTML5 implemented in their latest shipping versions. HTML5 is not a single feature, but rather a set of features. Video is one of those features. Safari, Chrome, and Firefox all ship with HTML5 video and Opera’s next version will. Microsoft has said they’re interested in HTML5 video.

It didn’t lose focus — it changed to offer more power and ensure it’s survival. There is nothing to fully replace it and as it will keep changing there never will be.

Or… Dreamweaver which supports HTML5?

It’s not release yet. But will be available within the next few months. RIM has announced this already.

These guys are just haters because they wished they developed the technology, a perfect example is silverlight, which to me is the same thing but crappier in terms of a ms technology. HTML 5 is crap if you ask me, i’ve seen some demos of video in html5 and its crap, adobe is so advance in terms of video. They are 4 years ahead of the game.

flash is a bloated pig…

java is slow too…

html5 in action … http://jilion.com/sublime/video

you’re lying.

For one thing one could develop a HTML5 webpage without paying the cost of any development tools (such as Flash CS4 or, Flex Builder if an IDE is needed) by using HTML5 only, or with Flex SDK. However seeing a big stream of money being threaten by another competing technology, Adobe won’t just sit there and do nothing.
The biggest move is still not seen by Microsoft which is pushing Silverlight and WMV. If those things are not solved now, Flash would still triumph.

Nice. Shame it doesn’t work with Firefox, and froze half way through with Google Chrome.

gmail file upload = Flash

In fact for any decent file upload (multiple file select, upload progress, file filter, etc.) you need flash.
And that’s a basic html functionality, nothing near the complexity of video.

Very good point.

As a web developer, watching javascript performance and css animations improve. It seems feasible that HTML could solely replace flash. But you are correct, we are YEARS away.

Will it happen? Its completely up to all these big companies.

But I am sure about one thing. Adobe is very biased in this matter, its not about innovation to them. If Flash dies, so does a lot of their revenue.

Google maps is not Flash btw. Actually with all these examples you pointed out there are lighter but more powerful alternatives that don’t rely on plugins

But true.. There are a bunch of things in Flash. But don’t kid yourself it’s not like the web is driven on flash. If you take the video part away then Flash is the exception. I would not be surprised to find out that over 95% of Flash embed tags out there link to ads. And if Apple refuses to put Flash in the iPad and it becomes one fifth as popular as the iPhone you can count on advertisers to abandon Flash in a matter of seconds. Because they don’t care if its running on Flash or not. They want to reach the customers. I dare you to find me a single company that is looking into advertising on the internet that will be ready to say that having their ad run in Flash is a deal breaker.

What Adobe needs to do is to do the smart thing and get in the HTML5 game. They make great tools and SVG and Canvas badly need some developer tools.

Sorry but BS.
There is not a statistical chance in hell that you have been using a mac and never had a Flash problem.

Are you saying that Safari has never crashed for you or become slow. If it has then in 90% of the time it’s because of Flash.

J, he means Flash is a resource hog on Macs, compared to PCs. This is generally true, as Flash on PCs has access to hardware acceleration to speed things up. OS X doesn’t allow Flash access to hardware acceleration.

Flash enables the major competitors to Apple’s revenue stream (i.e. free Hulu & Flash games vs. paid iTunes content). Thus, Apple has a lot to gain by suppressing Flash on its mobile devices and making the Flash experience less enjoyable within OS X. Unfortunately, both Adobe and us Apple users pay the price.

The numbers that were told at WWDC is that according to statistics Flash is responsible for over 60% of crashes on Mac OS X.

Notice that this is ALL crashes on Macs but not Safari crashes.

Please. It is much easier to create a native app experience on Flash, Flex and ActionScript than it is using the iPhone SDK and Objective-C. That’s already an advantage to the developer. Then you’ve got the tiny issue of Apple keeping 30% of the fruit of your hard labor.

HTML5 can’t do half the things Flash does. You do realize there’s a lot more to Flash than just web video, right? Even talking only about games you can clearly see how Apple sees Flash as a threat. You can have all kinds of sweet games made in Flash, and that’s precious revenue that Apple doesn’t get to tack their 30% tax on.

Then you go into Flex applications, which provide a native app experience in the browser, and you have a pretty good idea of why Flash will never, ever be supported on the iPhone or iPad.

Luckily Flash actually runs fine on Windows. And Flash also supports H.264.

So adding video tag support in IE is a minor javascript fix that loads up Flash for IE dinosaurs. Same is done for WebSockets and the other HTML5 tags are also easily added using a quick script. It’s quick and easy and it is the standard for a while in the web world to fix the problems of IE. Open up a random website and look at the source and you will probably see endless amounts of IE fixes.

People have all gotten sick of companies like Microsoft and Adobe literally slowing down the technological evolution of the human race. When I imagine where the Web could be if it weren’t for MS…..

I’ve been a Flash developer since the days when it was called FutureSplash Cell Animator – before Macromedia acquired it. I’ve heard it all before – people bagging Flash for what-ever ignorant reason they think they know.

The reality is simple. Flash, as a development platform, has advanced the nature of web-based multimedia way more than any other technology available. It is still the tool of choice by millions of animators and Rich Internet Application developers. It survives because it is feature-rich, mature and relatively easy to learn by even the newest of newbies.

Apple will relent in time – this is obvious, to me at least. The arrogance shown by Apple is doing the company no favours and, in my opinion, has the real potential to turn into a PR nightmare for Apple.

As a consumer I expect to be able to get a full internet experience on a device that I shell out hundred of dollars for (thousands if we’re talk about the iPhone). I don’t expect to have the experience diluted and then told that this is the best it can get – especially from a company like Apple.

It really is pathetic of Apple to think that they can dictate what web technologies we can and cannot use within the browser on their devices. It simply shows that they are either deluded or scared of Flash.

That’s my 2 cents … now I’ll shut up :)

This is an interesting solution. From a developer’s perspective, the main draw to Flash is not really their player, but the versatility of the platform and their authoring tools , Flash and FlexBuilder, which are lightyears ahead of anything HTML5 has to offer. I think that’s what they’re going to do with the Flash to iPhone packager.

yeah – right.

Simply didnt work for me either – video starts playing but the second I click on it I get a static image for the rest of the video – sound keeps playing but no video.

Fail.

You are seeing it now. YouTube and Vimeo both offer HTML5 versions of their site. And many *new* sites are using HTML5 as default.

It’s actually quite simple to add basic HTML5 tag support to IE. JS is is used to dynamically switch to a Flash player for the IE platform. As Flash runs fine on Windows this is not a problem.

Web developers have a long history if fixing the bugs in IE using all sorts of fixes. Every site does it. And yeas I’m calling Microsoft’s inability to follow any knows standards “a bug”. Because that’s what the would call it if it were other peoples software and their standards.

Well, Google Chrome Frame could solve this – if IE need to be retrofitted by flash, than retrofit it with HTML5…

I guess the real problem is that Flash files were written in the previous version of ActionScript. When using Actionscript 3, the same files (on the outside) work much faster.

We write very good code (www.flabell.com) for Flash, and we dumped AS2 long time ago. If Adobe managed to push AS3 forward a bit faster, I bet there wouldn’t be so many unsatisfied users.

Plus, Flash Player on the Mac should be improved. It does work very slowly compared to how it works on PCs.

Flash is filled with bugs and so are most flash banners and applets. The only reason why “apple fans” are annoyed by the errors is because they are used to an error-free environment, which microsoft users sadly never will understand nor think possible. I can see why Adobe is annoyed with Steve Jobs and apple, but blaming HTML5 for your future miseries is insane – with the current evolution of internet explorer it will take at least a century before HTML5 will reach the main consumer.

Adobe, maybe you shouldn’t take naps in the class? Just my two cents. /Ulrik Hvide

Follow the money.

If I used Flash to create a Web app and hosted it on a Web site instead of developing one for the App store I could bypass Apple’s App store entirely.

Goodbye 30% cut of sales for Steve Jobs.

Example:
Think about this for a Moment. Why create a NYTimes APP store app for iPad iPhone iTouch users when I could create a much better working FLASH based Web site for those mobile users? (easy to do . . )
I (The NYTimes) would control the customer experience vs Apple.

You know what Adobe could do, to put Apple in the same situation? :-)

For starters, they could say they won’t ship CS5 for MACs, until Apple works with them for bringing the Flash Player to the mobile devices. >:)

Then, don’t release the Flash Player for MACs at all.

I bet Apple would immediately get it. :-)

Dude seriously, all browsers except internet explorer have about the same rendering. Internet explorer will at some point follow the development, it’s just a matter of time.

But then Adobe would be a pack of wankers like Apple … we don’t need 2 mentally retarded companies right now, do we?

Thanks, Danno. I guess I’ll just go by my experience of using it on a variety of platforms over the last ten years or so rather than the ill considered opinions of some halfwits on Twitter if it’s all the same to you though.

You’re right. They help us block the Flash sites we don’t want whilst enabling the ones we do.

How does that choice work on the iPhone or iPad again?

“Google maps is not Flash btw.”

Yeah but Street View – which is what he was talking about – is.

You need to do more thinking and less typing. A good start would be on your ridiculous premise that the iPad selling a bit under 2 million units a quarter is going to make advertisers consider their main delivery mechanisms.

I don’t think that the intent of the post was to highlight the fact that HTML5 will throw us back, it means it will take time to catch up. As an impending doom to flash as technology, it is not. I think this article with this subject line creates bias… For the record I support HTML5.

Wow, thanks for your isolated example!

I use Windows desktops and laptops and a Macbook under Windows and OS X. I’ve only had issues with Flash using the Macbook under OS X.

Why? I have no idea but it seems to be a common issue across the intarwebs whereas, despite their far greater volume, Windows PCs do not appear to have the same level of issues.

Of course, when I say the Macbook has problems I mean that it occasionally has problems, not that it crashes ‘fairly consistently. If your PC and Macbook are crashing ‘fairly consistently’ then that suggests more of a PEBKAC issue to me.

Best lay off the streaming goat porn for a while, eh?

I just wish they hurry up with Flash 64 so I can use a 64bit browser in my 64 bit windows 7.

This is only reason I am upset they seem not to care about 64bit. Instead they got some alpha version for Linux.

@jon,

I don’t know about your assertion that “many people can contribute and no one needs to wait for lazy Adobe to fix anything” – the HTML spec isn’t going to get instantly revised like a Wikipedia entry. It is a spec which has, I believe, a fairly protracted approval process and this is one of the problems. Yes, browser development firms can correct bugs, but its up to each such entity to do this. Bottom line, HTML5, especially broad, complete and standardized HTML5 support, is a long way off.

Now if only Adobe would go away, and take Flex with. It might start a trend.

You know your business is a goner when Microsoft starts to emulate your software. Bad to worse.

Its like the laggards copying the losers. What a motley crew.

Quark recommends the Russian or Chinese discount Adobe package for you and your friends.

“…Steve would not get his 30% fee which he gets from App Store.”

Why would Apple care about that? It’s not like Apple forces people to charge for their apps. You can already get free apps and games in the App Store.

So if Apple already allows people to sell free apps and games in the App Store, why would they care if people played free Flash games and Flash video on the web?

If this were just about money, Apple would have restricted access to YouTube also, since people get video on YouTube free. If Apple was banning Flash because of money, then they would restrict YouTube access so that people would pay for video on iTunes instead.

So explain that to me.

Flash is a raging, RAGING piece of crap. It crashes any and all of the 6 browsers I have installed, CONSTANTLY chews massive CPU, even when in minimized browser windows. It performs equally crappy in the MAC platform as well as PC. I for one am absolutely APPLAUDING Apple for punishing this pathetic content crutch.

The only things that should happen are Adobe produces a very stable and low resource usage Flash engine that plays nice and “just works”.

Or it gets replaced by better technology that is not a piece of garbage.

for YEARS Flash has been the scourge of browser stability, its really time for them to pay gdi.

Flash has been flakey. There was a security problem just 2 months ago.

Also, Firefox among others had problems showing flash files if you installed v10.0, the website (flash file) was reading it as v1.0 – the error was “you need flash v9 or later to view..” this was on hulu.com, yahoo.com etc.

“Adobe should review all code that goes onto the web!”

Oh, please, NO.

You do realize that the developers of those apps you love get paid when you view those ads, right? And that by blocking them, you’re basically using their product and stealing from them at the same time, right?

I defy you to point to any of the sites I gave examples of and show me a more powerful alternative that doesn’t use a plugin.

The point remains that Apple can not claim the “best” browsing experience on the iPad without Flash support until Flash is 100% gone and that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Can you imagine what a nightmare Apple support will have when this obviously consumer-targeted device gets in the hands of millions of users who don’t understand why a significant portion of the web doesn’t work for them. It may not impact sales but it’s still an arrogant and bonehead move.

Consumers don’t care – they just want it to work with minimal hassle. They could give two craps about how its developed.

The codec isn’t part of the browser. The decoder is. HTML5 punted on specifying the video codec because the browser guys can’t agree on which one.

So the issue here is that unless you encode your video in both H.264 and Ogg and whatever MSFT decides and possibly whatever Google releases via the On2 acquisition, certain browsers won’t be able to play your video and it’s welcome back to web circa 2001.

So less than 40% of browsers have the same rendering? And for those 40%, when I design a standards-compliant website and it looks different in Safari and Firefox, that’s my imagination?

I use a Mac but not Safari (Chrome4Life!) and haven’t experienced an actual crash caused by Flash itself. I’ve seen the Flash plugin itself die from time to time, but that’s about it.

In terms of performance, Flash is PAINFUL when it comes to CPU utilization and resource management – especially on OSX.

Google may release a high-quality, open-source codec using On2 code but will IE support it?

@Paul, free apps ars still good for Apple because you still have to go to the app store to get them. You’ve never heard of a department store giving away a cheap product just to get people walking through the store? Do you think Apple would be happy with a situation where people looking for games for the iPhone first went to a popular website hosting Flash games (run by a third-party, possibly aimed squarely at the iPhone market) instead of the app store? Also, may iPhone games are unique to the iPhone which also adds value to the product. Flash games would undermine this too.

Yes, Apple could have restricted YouTube viewing but of course they have to walk the fine line between controlling the device and making it attractive to customers. In that case, they chose to allow YouTube (which I think was a good business decision).

The problem is that Firefox won’t support h264 and IE probably won’t support Theora. And yes, there are reasons why this is so.

“Adobe is in a battle for developers, who buy its Creative Suite software to make Flash apps. As long as Flash is the de facto standard for video and animation on the Web, those sales will not be threatened. But if Flash developers migrate to other technologies to build better apps for the Web and mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad, Adobe’s competitive position will be weakened. It will defend Flash to the death.”

Developers are not tied to a particular runtime platform. If Adobe makes Flash able to publish to the iPhone platform, developers will do that. If Adobe makes Flash able to publish to a HTML5/Javascript runtime, developers will do that.

What developers are tied to is their development environment (Flash CS4, Flex Builder) and their programming languages of choice (Actionscript 3.0). Illustrators and animators are also tied to their application environments (Illustrator CS4, Flash CS4).

If Adobe were to update the Flash development environment to support publishing to a HTML5 runtime, they would push innovation forward on an open standard, and allow their existing developers to use the same tools without tying themselves to the Flash plugin. More thoughts here: http://bit.ly/bys44l

By the time HTML5 becomes a standard, Adobe would have most likely innovated to push Flash and Flex even farther into the future. The notion that HTML5 can kill flash is pretty absurd.

further*

Adobe slowing down the technological evolution of the human race? Are you kidding me? Where was YouTube, MySpace, Google Street View, etc. before Flash? Not to mention any website with a decent file uploader. Adobe/Macromedia has been pushing the web harder than any other company. Then there’s augmented reality, making phone calls from your browser (Ribbit), etc.

So as Firefox won’t support h264, are you going to use Flash for that too? Or encode all your videos two or three times in different codecs to suit Firefox, Safari, Chrome and IE. What’s the point of HTML5 video then when you could just us Flash, encode in h264, and avoid all that crap?

The YouTube site doesn’t work with the browsers used by 90% of people surfing the net! Is that really a viable alternative?

There are many things in FLash that have been standardized in HTML5 via a variety of processes that do the same thing that the Flash web browser plugin currently does. For example, to do video there is the video tag. To do accelerated 2D drawing there is the canvas tag. To do 3D in a browser there is WebGL. All of these things are embedded into the browser code as opposed to the browser being a stupid renderer and requiring plugins for everything. HTML5 pretty much takes the best of everything that people wanted to do and brings it into HTML5 tags.

I want Flash on my iPhone, but I can’t help but notice playing Flash games drives my 2.33 Ghz core-duo with 4GB of RAM in to hysterics and its heats up like a hot plate. Flash on an iPhone would probably cause it to explode like a bomb.

Yes. and they are lazy… where is cocoa for Adobe CS? lazybones…

it’s mostly about control instead of money. apple doesn’t want a dilution of their service/products and they feel like the current state of flash is inferior (even if flash was up to capabilities by the rest of the world/other companies not named apple, apple under steve jobs and the other heads there will still say flash is inferior and adobe is lazy. it is just the way of apple. people need to get over it. the choice adobe is trying to get apple to accept and allow the choice to users is not acceptable to apple. apple also controls the message of it’s users and since apple sells more to the general populous now, instead of just techies, they don’t question the apple message of control).

you example of youtube is the same with how they haven’t banned google maps/streetview and other google apps. people who say the web uses a lot of flash interface are correct, and that since html5 isn’t a web standard yet, that it’s not going to get rid of flash (just because of this youtube experiment with html5 and the ipad and other products that are moving to html5). as a user i would appreciate if some sort of standard can be maitained so that no matter what browser i use i can view the websites i want and play games, watch videos, etc… without having errors happening all over the place, and crashes, and empty white boxes with x’s asking me to download plug-in’s etc.

I also am a Windows user so I haven’t experienced the crash problem, but if Flash is really as bad as the Apple fans are claiming, it deserves to be called out.

I can appreciate that sentiment because as an iPhone owner, I am *forced* to use iTunes, which on Windows is loaded with annoying behaviors (some people might even call them bugs) and background processes that slow down or hang my PC. If any other company but Apple forced me to put up with that, I would complain bitterly!

I’m getting the feeling you’ve actually had to work with customers or managers/partners with no tech background. In their case the devil is the details.

well they don’t even need to do that. they basically have to think. we had an old pc we bought but basically retooled it every couple of years to extend it’s lifeline, and anyways we used windows and ie whatever version was out in the year. we’ve used windows and ie for basically everything, and depending on the websites we visited which used flash, we would get an inordinant amount of crashing. i finally decided to look at what the problem was and look at how some of these websites were being coded and i just saw how really lazy people who mabye just don’t care, were causing me all kinds of problems with my computer and web browsing capabilites. i actually thought i was crazy, but when i was at school and using pc’s and other browsers i wouldn’t have this whole flash crash problem. with every update of ie, the flash integration has gotten better but still there are websites that i go to even now with flash plug-ins that will crash my browser/computer. it’s unfortunate but it’s a reality and before when i just wanted to believe it was all a flash problem and blame adobe, i did. now i realize that i can’t be that stupid and give in to blind anger. it really bothers me that i can’t say fuck flash. i don’t actively seek it out, and i don’t block it or try to not go to websites using flash, but as soon as i see the code and it’s buggy i try to leave the website asap and try to cancel out whatever command i enabled. in the eyes of the general public, flash will never get a fair shake and that’s probaby because people are easily annoyed by ad’s and buggy videos that don’t play, or aspects of games you can’t use because you don’t have flash, and because adobe doesn’t do a good enough job explaining just basic things about flash and web browsing with the general people.

please don’t bring me back to the late 1990′s and early 2000′s. i can’t imagine it…even though i have gone through my i hate flash phase. now i understand that although there might be limitations with flash, that mostly the people who code and create websites and other internal uses on their websites who use flash are the problems.

in complete agreement.

I’ve been developing with Flash since the days of future splash as well and my experience couldn’t be more at odds with your opinion. Flash is “relatively” stable on Windows machines and pretty much a horror show on Macs and Linux systems. Even worse on mobile implementations. But even in it’s best incarnation on windows it is terrible at memory management. It has exceptionally bad garbage collection that relies on the developer to implement it, if they care to. The result is that a simulation created in flash will often continue to eat up system resources as long as it’s running. I’ve seen flash apps redline a processor in a few minutes… on Mac and Windows systems. On my Mac, running a Flash app will sometimes cause the fans to kick in all at once to keep the CPU from overheating… and I’ve heard of similar situations on Windows. This overtaxing of the CPU eats battery life… simple physics. This is what Apple objects to and it’s the basis of Jobs’ remarks that Adobe is lazy in their development of Flash.

I find it interesting that Adobe says the ball is in Apple’s court, when these problems have been with Flash for at least a decade. They should take the criticism to heart and clean their own code up before whining to the press.

JonGretar, what sort of crack are you on? Adobe slowing down technological evolution???

Have you heard of a little program called Photoshop?

Used a PDF once or twice?

I have no idea why Apple hates Flash so much. I’m a developer and html “standards” are the biggest joke in the world. Meanwhile, the few projects I’ve developed in Flash have worked without issue and look the same on absolutely every machine.

I don’t know what kind of Flash things people are viewing that is causing crashes. Is it weird games? Pr0n?

i don’t think adobe needs to play apple’s game, especially at the level apple is playing the game right now trying to forces hand’s and the market. apple understands but pretends to be obtuse, which will probably in the long run not work out in their favour. adobe just needs to keep working with competitiors and keep improving it’s products. if they don’t ever get flash on other apple platforms, they should bear that responsibility and hopefully for them users become more educated and start to understand what’s actually going on with apple vs adobe.

It couldn’t be that your system has a bug in it or perhaps a corrupt/outdated flash or browser installation. Naaaaw. Couldn’t be. Flash crashes for everyone. (NOT). Fix your computer or get another one.

Also, the use of Javascript for rich user interfaces has been eating away at Adobe: http://synaptify.com/?p=613702

Quite the astute synopsis my man.

@yeah

Thanks, that’s exactly what I’ve been saying. It has nothing to do with money, but the Apple Haters want everyone to believe that because it makes Apple look like greedy bastards.

Steve Jobs was caught saying in private that Flash is buggy and slow, which is why he didn’t want it on the iPhone or iPad. Why the heck would he lie during a private meeting with his employees? This is the same meeting where he called Adobe lazy and insulted Google.

So according to the Apple Haters, we’re supposed to believe that Apple doesn’t like Flash, because it would compete with the App Store, even though they made the decision before the App Store even existed and we’re supposed to believe that they don’t want people watching free Flash video and playing free Flash games, even though there are already free apps, games and video on the iPhone.

And we’re supposed to believe this greed motive, despite the fact that Steve Jobs has admitted in private that Flash is buggy and slow.

The Apple Haters don’t have one shred of proof to back this up, but we’re supposed to believe their lies, just because.

Uh, no. Apple doesn’t like Flash because it is shit. That is all.

get a new computer. something wrong with yours. if flash was as bad as you’re saying companies wouldn’t be pouring millions into developing RIA’s on the platform. Think about it. Your computer is broken, fix it.

good point. On all the Reputable RIA sites, I have not once experienced flash crashing. When i’m on a ‘questionable site’ I’ve had it stop working and I’m glad, because obviously there’s something malicious going on so I just close the tab! easy fix.

yes, an exaggeration without grounds. next..

you are a bloated pig. what are you talking about? you have no idea do you? next..

there are free flash development tools such as flashdevelop too. anyone can write actionscript using notepad and utilize the free Flex SDK too.

So I assume you’re using those flash-blocking plugins with Firefox? If so, good luck viewing videos online after “HTML5 kills flash”. The sites using HTML5 are feeding the same h.264 files that their flash player uses. And FF doesn’t support h.264.

Flash errors on Ads (which typically use interface loading) are good things: NO ADS.

A FF/Chrome/IE/Opera handle those errors it gracefully, so you get ad free pages by default. It’s funny, and it not bad actually.

As long as flash navigation and multimedia/videos work, I think people will be just fine.

Well not really an option unless you want to write Flex code and try to debug without any error messages :-) People that write more pure code than me first time thru can do this, but I’m more productive with a debugger, and they are probably enthralled with GO anyways. That failed bit of humor aside, you can see the error listings, and usually figure out what’s up. Blaming the Flash debug version is again simple Adobe bashing. Adobe is not perfect, but there is a HELL of a lot of bad code out there. Wait till all these “programmers” move away from Flash and to HTML 5 + actionscript + JQuery + ??. Maybe you can’t write fatal errors with these tools so we’ll have no more issues — a crash-free web. If so, I’m there in a heart beat. Til then, Flex Builder Pro is a pretty good environment to write complex RIA code.

yep, wouldn’t surprise me if Adobe developed a canvas/js/svg export for flash. after all, advertisers aren’t simply going back to animated gifs if flash falls out of favor.

A message for the Adobe Flash Team:

STOP CRASHING MY BROWSER !

and furthermore, even IE8 doesn’t include video tag support. HTML5 video serving up h.264 is fantastic… if the UA is Safari or Chrome!

Perhaps, just watch out when those ‘fans’ started to decrease when they realize that flash, gives them a lot of headaches for their iDevices.

I gotta say that flash as a whole is definately not stable and alot of websites problems come from poorly written flash scripts so I would have to agree that Flash must be upgraded. Although, ‘eliminating’ it totally in the internet, like what other’s are proposing is pure BS.

HTML5 still lacks some capabilities which the Flash does more smoothly, so my take? Improve both technology and see how this one rolls! More details: http://bit.ly/apple-ipad-scrutinized-details

um no, you’re under the mistaken assumption like 99.9% of the so called techies on the internet that flash=video=html5. This is completely wrong. Flash is a DEVELOPMENT environment, much like an operating system. That’s why you have things like flash desktops. If apple allowed other operating systems on their iphones then these operating systems could completely bypass it’s revenue stream. This is the reason why they also refuse to let emulators onto the app store as well.

not a fan of apple…

dude, are you useing MS browser? throw it away and you won’t find it crashing any more … haha

Because maybe they have money to waste? Or are looking for a change in OS’s. I bought a mac not being a mac fan. How could I be a mac fan when Ive never owned one? Now I do.

You nailed it my friend! Jobs and Co. is all about the greed, baby, If Apple can’t completely control the revenue flow, they try and squash it. Capitalism to the nth degree….

Oh please. It would only be ‘stealing’ if clicking on those ads was mandatory under the law or stated in some sort of EULA that you would have to opt in to before using the site. Next you’ll be trying to tell me that by putting the TV on mute during commercials I am stealing TV.

flash is not web content, html 5 is same shit, web page data interchange should be in plain, thats what xhtml for. html 5 is bloated and not even standard recomendation yet. if you wanna see movie just use realplayer, wmp, not web browser

the latest html standard is html 4.01 in 1999, xhtml 1.1 is standard ready in 2001

They can update it quickly, but do they? How long did they sit around and justify not doing a 64-bit Flash, and even now there’s just a 64 bit alpha version for Linux? (And while it beats a 32-bit version with a wrapper, it’s still buggy, and those Zynga games are dog slow.)

I like the post but…

in company widget

{
Company: Adobe Systems
Website: get.adobe.com/flashplayer

Adobe Flash (previously known as “Macromedia” Flash) is a multimedia platform originally acquired by Macromedia and currently developed and distributed by “Adobe Systems”.
}

Both companies links are giving 404 :)

it should be

{
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/macromedia

NOT

http://www.techcrunch.com/company/macromedia

}

I agree, Chris. But let’s remember that Flash is still a plug-in, a supplement which does auxiliary tasks that the open web is not specified to do. Shouldn’t the open web mature to the point where we don’t have to rely on ancillary products that essentially plug a hole in the feature set?

Dear Adobe,

Please take HTML 5 as the compliment it is. You have done your job developing and promoting your product so incredibly well that it has become an unofficial standard. Now it is time for an official standard.

Again, thanks for all your hard work.

Sure – the open web should mature to the point where we don’t have to rely on ancillary products that essentially plug a hole – but until then, is it really Apples place to ‘police’ the internet?

If the Flash player drains battery life on the iPad etc. then let that be a problem for the end user – they can avoid Flash interactions if they wish – or even opt to turn Flash support off. But to deny the technology outright is just plan rude.

I hope they all learn to play nice soon.

I pay more because I want a quality machine that works!

Please remember that Job’s claim is that Adobe is being lazy in the their IMPLEMENTATION OF FLASH ON MACS IS BUGGY!
That is true. I constantly get flash errors on my mac.

flash isnt on the iphone because it would kill the apps store.

we dont pay for dinky little games on in the internet yet apple has a walled garden that mostly works because flash is disabled

I am using a Dell right now and I run into Flash errors fairly consistantly. Not in video playback usually. It happen mostly in ads and interfacing loading. Same on my Mac.

Smug and wrong are not a pretty combination.

I am using a Dell right now and I run into Flash errors fairly consistantly. Not in video playback usually. It happen mostly in ads and interfacing loading. Same on my Mac.

Smug and wrong are not a pretty combination.

Good news if we can get rid of proprietary solutions like Flash, but not if it is replaced with Apple/Microsoft/Adobe/Google controlled platforms. Webmasters and develoeprs really need to wake up now; HTML5 could be the solution to ensure compatibility across browsers and operating systems.

Developers:
please try to avoid closed standards. Please donæt make shortcuts when you develop web solutions. Please make your sites available for the entire world by supporting web standards. Test your sites at http://validator.w3.org/ or by any other validator. This is important for the future of Internet.

but adobe is doing their best to fix flash. whatever updates they have adobe will not accept/will recieve but won’t roll out to their devices. so then how is adobe supposed to continue to fix their flash problems. flash isn’t perfect, but then nothing really is. a lot of the problem with flash is that there are a lot of bad coders who create via the internet and it’s bad not only for adobe, apple, but for all of us.

apple will not accept…

i’ve been using that for a long time but i can tell you none of my friends, schoolmates (minus the nerds), or extended family (aside from my nerdy cousins and my brother) know about clicktoflash. there are a lot of average users using the net…and if something goes wrong they can’t even begin to tell you what the problem is. they will just say it crashed and they might notice flash but they actually won’t know specifically why the browser and computer crashed.

lol. i can’t believe my comment. as usual full of spelling errors and bad grammar but thanks for reading it. i’m not really an apple hater (although i don’t like the company but am very fond of the different sections of the company and aspire to work there either as a designer or marketer or work for google’s maps devision) so when i make my comments about the company it doesn’t really come from a place of emotion. i might not like what they do yeah because i’m a believer of a different view, but i understand why apple is what they are and over the years i’ve been studying apple (had to do a couple reports about the company last semester for my graphics design class. apple is featured in a lot of design material. it’s almost as insuffrable as it is hilarious). they are a company. they run like a company. they care about their bottom lines, reaching their achievements and tasks they set out via their timelines and they are me first. another commenter in one of these other apple threads (i think the most reacent one about them removing a usb downloading function for some company that robin wauters posted today) apple is not all about the user. apple says it’s all about the user but what matters above all to apple is control. that it’s the most important thing that probably overrules everything else for that company. if you’re an ocd type of person, a creator of any type (coder for example) then you understand. you might not want to or agree with them but it doesn’t take a genuis or a lot of brain exertion to figure this simple point out. from that their whole ecosystem, history, their viewpoints, their products, their everything rolls out. i’ve gone through my flash sucks phrase and i just realised that i was being stupid, willfully stupid maybe, but even when i figured out that some people i know don’t even care to try and figure out why flash is so problematic, i didn’t give in to the stupidity that seems to rule us general populus people. i am not a techie. i am obviously the normal type person (as many commenters seem to mention in the maxipad is for mom’s posts) you would think buys an apple product because i have watched more than 1000 of their commercials and i buy their message. sorry. my only saving grace is that i like to think about things. people who don’t admit that apple is a great company are simply lying to themselves. apple innovated but to a certain extent. they hold back a lot (and we all know holding back is not sexy) as a company and that may be a byproduct for their need to control. the creativity people talk about in realtion to that company is also limited because it’s within their spectrum. if apple ever became a company like google for instance which likes to disrupt because they see that as a way of moving forward, then maybe apple would be coming at people’s perceptions with a wicked golden glove left hook…but once again that’s not the case. it doesn’t pay to be a hater in any means because it just means you’re blinded. apple is not ruling the world if you think about it but the are controlling a message they want to infiltrate into the masses and that is that it’s good if a company holds all the controls to your devices/platforms/gadgets/tools, and that is something people just inherintley baulk at. people hate control unless they know it’s good for them, which is specifically why apple drums this message and why they are one of the companies to benefit from the message of control. what’s really surprising is that in a country like america, who hate large entities controlling them (the unthinkers mostly, but i think there’s a lot of smart people who also don’t like government or corporate control and would perfer being their own drivers) apple is a pretty popular country.

meant apple is a popular company.

there’s a reason people shouldn’t function on no sleep and their vice of ganja, drugs, coffee, sugar, or gatorade.

and i don’t agree with you about the whole it’s not about money point (people keep bringing up the money slant to this for a reason…mostly devs see). it’s always about money. apple is a company. bottom lines always involve money instead of altruistic motives, and the only reason i said it’s not about money, when i probably should have said it’s not just about money, is that control for them trumps money, but money is integral to their message as well. they wouldn’t have all that control if they didn’t have huge money, huge money interests backing them. apple is a company. it doesn’t pay to become emotional about it or any other company really. it’s nice for consumers to be invested in their products, but it’s probably better to just think smart.

i think this highlights not only some of the failings in Flash (no-one is saying it’s perfect) but also a raft of badly coded flash apps. I’ve been delivering flash based adverts for over a decade now. we’ve seen ads eat up cpu not just because it’s flash but because some coder has decided to implementing some maths that the Flash movie then fails to control and memory/cpu spiral out of control.

FWIW and IME most browser issues we find nowadays are related to plugins, but not necessarily Flash, it’s the badly written scripts, extensions, add-ons and toolbars that cause the majority of the issues we get reported to us by users.

Does Flash have limited shelf-life?
In regards to video, possibly, but HTML5 is still years off ratification and implementation so Adobe has ample time time to fix those issues you’ve rightfully raised. We would need to be able to replicate exactly how we use this new element in the same way we currently utilise Flash (eg; advertising, metrics, look/feel & experience etc). Moving to a new implementation which has less functionality is bad for users and publishers alike.

One thing I would be glad to see the back of though is the lag created by flash player instantiation and with browsers natively supporting embed video in HTML5 that should make user’s experience much smoother and easier, which is our ultimate goal.

@Chuck A

A lovely, common sense post. Thankyou.

Obviously they are not making much from people using Flex SDK (I mentioned that as a “free” choice.)

I also see instances of cases that flash player just constantly eat up a CPU core’s resource of a computer. Memory is a hard time, as flash is really terrible in terms of memory.

Also Flash is often used as a tool to track users, which for companies it is a good thing, for users, definitely no.

The thing I like Google Chrome is that if the Flash plugin is using too much resources I could simply kill it for good (which is very hard, or impossible to do that with Firefox.)

Again, Fklash eating up CPU is probably indicative of bad Actionscript rather than necessarily Flash per se.

Flash isn’t really used by any major service providers as a production tracking system. Ad networks still rely upon cookies rather than Flash local shared objects. Yes we can show proof of concept tracking using LSO but it’s not being used by any supplier I know instead of standard cookie tracking.

I’d also argue that ‘tracking’ (and that encompasses a lot of things but for my POV it’s relating to advertising) is not necessarily a bad thing, if anything does benfit the user by restricting some ads and making the user’s experience better by increasing relevance. But that’s a whole other debate which invariably ends in , Godwin’s Law and/or tin-foil hats :-)

Exactly, GPS is a terrible drain on battery life I don’t see Apple blocking that.

And remember the only reason we have these plugins in the first place is that the existing technology has failed to provide suitable opportunities to do what customers want their device to do.

Steve Jobs is probably one of those, boring simple techie guys who probably doesn’t have a creative or artistic ability in his whole entire body! Why in the world would someone like this guy even understand a program that gives designers the ability and freedom to express their artistic ideas through the internet? Why would he have any use for Flash at all besides reading the news section of the New York Times? Oh that’s right animation, interactive websites, Flash Video on YouTube, Google etc.

Steve you go ahead and make that cool looking text box on your web blog, and us creative people will stick to making games and interactive websites on the web!

While I agree that Flash on the Mac is a bit buggy as compared to the Windows implementation, I don’t think stability is the real reason Apple doesn’t allow Flash on the iPod, iPad, iPhone.

I think Apple avoids Flash because of the large universe of Flash-based applications available. Apple and Apple developers make all there money from products that you purchase through the app store. Why would Apple want to provide you with an opportunity to use free Flash applications that would take the place of something available in the app store?

I’m sure the Apple folks all tell themselves that they are doing it for stability and user experience, but profit seems the more likely motive.

Unless the lack of Flash support starts to reduce adoption of their latest and greatest product, I see no reason why Apple would add Flash support. Based the success of the Touch and the iPhone, it appears that the lack of Flash support is not a deal breaker for most people.

=== popurls.com === popular today…

yeah! this story has entered the popular today section on popurls.com…

I won’t touch on the Mac versus Windows debate but I will say that someone who has tried repeatedly to get decent support out of Adobe for any product in the past few years, I agree that Adobe has gotten lazy with regard to customer care.

Ok, people seem to be loosing focus here. Apple doesn’t support flash right now because what it call bugs. I call it poor memory management. Every time I go to a site with flash, my Powerbooks, memory spikes, and my fans go up to maximum speed. The laziness is really just a matter of reducing the memory leaks. If some want to blame those on poor code, that’s something still Adobe should address.. why have a product that can do this in the first place.

Now HTML5 is going to one day replace flash in 90% of instances. Yes, the technology is young, but it is how Apple normally does things. My memory may be poor, but most technology was adopted by apple before it became mainstream; such as Wireless, USB, FireWire, and even loosing floppy discs. I remember when Apple quit putting floppy drives in their computers and everyone was so animate on how bad of a move that was as well.

so long story short. Adobe, fix the memory leaks that cause the crashing in Flash, and I’m sure Apple would have no problem supporting you. However, it really is only a matter of time that browsers support video natively via HTML5, so prepare for that day.

I was playing with some HTML 5 demos yesterday with Firefox of course. The browser must have crashed about 6-10 times.

HTML5 != videos streaming. If HTML5 is just used for video Silverlight/Flash will simply smoke it.

The biggest problem for me with HTML 5 is JavaScript. jQuery and other frameworks will never provide the scale that frameworks like .NET can. For example, how am I going to scale a process to 8 cores in JavaScript (without some 3rd party translator framework). With Silverlight that is native in .NET.

Then he can just use Chrome. What’s your point?

if you dont want Flash to die just enable the fullscreen input text…. how hard can that be put a watermark of flash in the corner or something in case of scams with fullscreen…..

HTML5 doesnt have that feature of TRUE FULLSCREEN and HTML5 really blows hard with video quality…

3x the CPU load to run Flash vid on a Mac. What would that mean for iPhone/Pad battery life? Adobe is slow to support 64-bit apps and fix Flash on the Mac. If I were Jobs I’d be pissed too.

Also, think about it – we shouldn’t be letting any one company be the gatekeeper for web content. Apple, Adobe, MS, nobody… Flash’s days are numbered for that reason alone.

I own a several windows machines, a Macbook Pro 13″ and an iphone.

Saying the mac and apple “just works” is a load of crap. I downloaded the ipad keynote from the apple website, viewing in Apple quicktime, on my very new Macbook Pro. All three of these things are directly from Apple. The audio on this keynote eventually doesn’t sync with the video. I’ve closed it and restarted it, and the same thing. I feel like I’m watching a 70′s dubbed kung fu video.

To me this is not excusable. With a Windows machine, I can grant them excuse, because they don’t claim to be the so called elite. (Both in word and price). It’s easier to overlook bugs in Windows, because they don’t claim perfection as Apple does.

I know it seems minor, but when a Apple Quick time video, (a video that brags and boasts about Apple) that I downloaded from Apple.com, that I am playing on Apple Quicktime on a Apple Macbook Pro doesn’t sync with it’s audio, that just pisses me off.

I just want some 64 bitness

I run 64-bit Windows 7 and Flash crashes Firefox on almost a daily basis. Adobe’s implementation on in Firefox is unbelievably buggy. There are several sites where I have to use IE in order to access the site because the Flash on the site crashes FF constantly. I so hope that HTML5 kicks Adobe’s rear with video.

Anyone creating nothing more than SVG or video, let them do it in HTML5. For anyone who wants to actually create a decent application, I think I’d stick with Flash.

HTML5 and Flash aren’t even comparable technologies. As soon as HTML5 interprets ActionScript3, or let’s me create Socket connections, I’ll start using it. Until then, I think I’ll continue using the Flash platform for those sort of things.

I should probably also mention that I’m an avid JavaScript/xHTML developer, as well as a Flash / Flex developer. I’ve written more JS/Ajax lines of code than AS3, and I certainly don’t see Flash going away anytime soon.

Perhaps he actually writes decent code.

Your retarded, flash video nowadays uses H.264 or the old VP6. The odd old vid will be sorenson from flash 7 and below days.

Do some research before the hate.

Probably the same way Apple is lazy with their implementation of iTunes on Windows. That software is completely bloated and runs like a slug.

Apple doesnt support Flash becoz Flash might take away some of itunes profit (esp when used in mobile devices)… Think about it…

Same as providing snowleopard on iPad will eat into macbook sales…

Corporate rules….

I’ve been incredibly disappointed in flash video playback performance. Videos that play completely smoothly standalone are choppy as hell, even sometimes on new systems. Hulu and the comedy central players freeze in fullscreen randomly or fail to load videos. Not to mention that since every site uses its own player, there is no consistency in interface, starting/stopping video, or handling timeouts.

I personally have seen no benefit in the switch to a flash player compared to the old way of embedding a quicktime, realmedia, or windows media stream. The user still has to download a plugin to run it, the only change is that people are for some reason more willing to install flash than a legitimate video player.

Can Flash go away already? Who wants the web run by a corporation? Video codecs have to open up and browser support has to increase, but the future of the web is definitely NOT Flash and Adobe.

Don’t ship CS5 for Mac? Nobody would care – they hate CS4 and its associated aweful performance. Crashing unexpectedly, hanging for no reason then coming back to life.

How long did CS4 come out? 12 months ago. There has not been a SINGLE update in that time – nothing, nada, zip. After every crash, the “bug report” screen comes up. About the first 20 times, I wrote my feedback, but having not heard back nor seen any updates, it’s clear nobody is listening or caring.

Adobe does not listen to its customers.
Adobe is not interested in producing a quality product.

I paid over $2,000 for CS4 and have been using Photoshop since 1998. Never again will I buy an Adobe product.

I own an Imac – and it doesn’t make me a an apple fanboy. I bought it because nobody else makes a desktop that’s not an eyesore. I mean a desktop is furniture. Ugly furniture makes your house look bad. There are, however, plenty of decent looking laptops out there that are better than macbooks on features, and looks just arent as important in a laptop, mobility is king. Let’s see : Mac laptops are HEAVY, with that ridiculous track pad that you have to click on with all your might. What else… awkward and poorly integrated menu options and inferior device support. The one lightweight mac laptop, the air, has no removable battery and mediocre battery life. My current pc laptop is 3.4 lbs 13″ LED screen, i regularly get 9 hours of battery, has a speedy dual core processor and a removable battery. And it looks decent, thin, clean and unadorned. it cost me $750 – cheap enough so that i can toss it out and pick up the latest hot trash the moment it hits the streets.

Sure it can. All it will take is some greasemonkey magic.

i love working with cs4, and can’t wait to see if they actually come up with necessary updates with cs5. i didn’t pay for it, but i’ve been working with it most of all last year. what made it crash????

i think kevin can f**k himself.. i hate flash, it is such a resource intensive shit and i always disable it anyways on my browsers..

From a developer’s point of view. Flash has a bad reputation because poor implementation.

If developers uses frameworks like gaia or swfseo. Flash would be the clear front runner.

HTML5 is a step backwards, because it is further fragmenting the development process due to incompatibilities. Not to mention the amount of code needed to implement “simple flash like” functionality far exceeds what it would take if one were using flash to develop something more robust.

x64 and Flash don’t play well together, even in 32 bit browser (no 64 bit Flash anyways). Maybe it’s anecdotal but numerous x64 machines I have contact with have Flash problems.

You’ve absolutely got a point there. Flash on the Mac is bad. It doesn’t matter if you use Safari, Firefox or Chrome. Video stutters… lags… crashes … and hogs the CPU.

That said, it’s not like it’s an Indy car on Windows either. I’ve routinely seen it drag my system to it’s knees as well.

Let’s look at flash for what it is: It was a unifying technology that pulled out out of the stone age of video on the web, and gave us a viable way to present movies.

Now we’re pushing beyond 320 x 240 clips and in to 1080p theatrical releases, however. We need more that Flash can provide.

Let’s thank Flash for helping us climb out of the stone age, and then push it aside for something better. Right now, that looks like HTML5 and H.264.

I am an Adobe Flex developer (one way to make Flash content) and an quite satisfied with Flash as a whole.

The technology itself is not buggy it is the people who use it. Flash is so powerful and can do so many things that in the hands of the untrained it can be dangerous and make buggy code. That is the main problem I see with Flash. Because it is a somewhat more inviting development platform over JSP or Sliverlight or etc. it is used more by the untrained web site jockey, the script monkey, who doesn’t really understand what he/she is doing.

Basically what i am trying to say is Flash’s global dominance is part of its flaw. Every monkey and his/her mother try to use Flash and unfortunately if you don’t know what you are doing you will probably make bugs. Is that Flash’s fault? I don’t think so.

Flash doesn’t make bugs, script monkeys make bugs.

As for bugginess being the reason Apple doesn’t allow Flash, that is bullcrap and everyone know it. All the other smart phones run it fine. The reason Apple doesn’t allow Flash is that it would allow people to use web applications and not have to pay for them in the app store….circumventing the Apple Ap Store tax. It is just Apple’s money grubbing and not their goal to save their users from bugs that keeps Flash off the iPhone and their dumb iPad.

Mike, the reason people are willing to install Flash is
1, before Adobe bought it, Macromedia paid everyone from Apple to Microsoft to include it with their OS
2, Flash players were small. It used to be only 300k.
3, Macromedia used to give it away the authoring suites to schools.
4, Flash installation was seamless, did not need browser restart.
5, Flash has lots of games.

You have a trojan on your computer that hijacks the Flash and other Internet traffic.

Adobe need to show us a working demo of Flash on an iPhone. Talk is cheap. Show us that you can do it and do it well!

One thing to point out in this Flash debate, is that Flash files may crash often and appear buggy because ActionScript allows pretty sloppy coding by the developers, much like HTML, Javascript, PHP, etc (as opposed to say, C).

While the buggy programs is a negative, the forgiving nature of the platform can be considered a positive. It allows for a much broader pool of people to creatively express themselves.

The pool of iPhone developers will generally be much smaller because Objective C is strict and harder to play around with than ActionScript.

A big part of the wonders of the web stems from this crowd-sourcing of creative output, with high magnitude volumes of trial and error.

As a multi-media/interactive development platform, FLASH is still providing tremendous value to the online environment in that regard.

+1. What if I click on an ad that I don’t really care about just to support the developer? Am I stealing from the company that paid for the ad?

I think most Firefox users have been using adblock for almost as long as they’ve been using Firefox.

Personally, I count on IE users to subsidize me across the board.

Another person who thinks Flash only does video!

It can, but 99% is on2 VP6. There are a million codecs and always have been, but gravitation is toward new/more efficient ones. Seen a lot of MPG-1 videos floating around in the last 5 years?

You shouldn’t have to install a crud plugin to watch a video in your browser no matter what OS. The end.

see, here’s the problem. people blame the developers. flash has lousy garbage collection, lousy memory management, lousy documentation, and no vetting process for its “platform.” most tutorials point out how arcane the garbage collection process is and basically advise developers to punt. apple may be overly strict in their application acceptance policy, but in doing so they make sure the apps are good citizens and don’t create crashes or worse.

somewhere between apple and flash is a golden mean.

FWIW, crashing adverts make perfect sense. My GF works in marketing/advertising, and she gets handed flash from an outside advertising agency and tries to make it work. She’s FAR from a computer nerd, and basically just tries to get ANYTHING to display so all hell doesn’t break loose. There’s no telling what ends up in that final code…

h.264 isn’t free, so that kills this one. Could potentially cost far more than Flash.

I don’t care whether flash is buggy, I just want the CHOICE to USE it if I WANT to…Apple restricts my choice and makes the decision for me (iPhone, iPad).

I can’t believe how many tech geeks are completely clueless on exactly what flash is and more importantly on what flash can do. I realize that most people think flash=video or flash=ads, but how quickly we forget that flash was hot years before we even had the bandwidth to view video on the web. And while video through the flash player has become ubiquitous, lifelong flash developers know that most of the innovation over the years in the flash code base has been in other areas besides video. Flash is a huge development platform, with loads of functionality that it would take HTML5, (don’t get me started), years to even begin to match. In fact, Adobe had fully embraced HTML 5 in the new creative suite, CS5. (search Adobe CS5 on youtube for examples) Flash, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, they all have new features that make creating content for HTML5 easier than ever. I don’t think Adobe is afraid of HTML5 . . . they know it can’t touch what Flash can do. For examples of Flash power check out http://www.thefwa.com unless you’re on the iPad, in that case check out Shrek racing!

It is a sad day when your product causes more trouble then Microsoft Windows. Adobe Flash, you are causing a wealth of problems, loving to crash. I try, and try to use you, even on a brand new computer! Yet you still lag and hog up every single resource.

HTML5, if lightweight, which seems so with Google, I’m loving you now. <3.

How do you kill flash on chrome?

Nice post, love it!

I run XP64 and have no problems whatsoever on my current i7 rig, nor did I have any problems with Flash on my previous Core 2 Quad. Maybe I’m browsing the wrong sites?

Bobby… You are absolutely right!

Ahahha… This is my first TC comment after 1 year of reading.

Except the problem is…. After getting one, I’m starting to think that maybe I should change the table because it looks ugly compared to the iMac.

This fanboy thingy is getting old. Most people (I dare say) buy things that work for them and make them happy. I love my macbook but absolutely hate iPhone (N1 is my drug), people are always fighting because someone made a comment that somehow criticized the other dude’s product.

Nothing is perfect right? Just be happy… =D

Toshiba is first big mistake. No more complaints. You have earned your errors.

What made it crash? Wish I knew. It just packs up out of nowhere. I haven’t been able to detect any pattern, it just disappears unexpectedly. I’ve learned to cope with it by saving after every single action.

How about a bugfix update to CS4 – haven’t seen a single update to Photoshop CS4 and it’s been out over a year without a single update. It crashes unexpectedly all the time, and the log doesn’t shed any light. I’ve been using photoshop since 1998 and this is the least stable version yet! My favorite version had to be 5.0. I won’t be buying another Adobe product unless things change – I’m done!

I’ve been designing and developing with Flash since approximately 2000, back when actionscript was 1.0. In 2005, I dumped it in favor of open standards. I could not face yet a 3rd syntax for writing actionscript or a redo of the IDE. Flash IDE and player are just terrible – this is what happens when a corporation gets fat, lazy and stop listening to customer feedback.

Adobe is doomed.

“HTML5 is still a young technology, and those incompatibility issues can be solved over time. ”

You have got to be kidding me.

The tech press is really getting irresponsible about html5. It is not a codified standard and it won’t be for awhile. Even more important, the lack of open standards is going to KILL the joys of people like tech bloggers and web devs alike who envision an easier to use and code internet.

Jack balls like Steve Jobs trying to enforce their own proprietary standards while at the same time decrying Flash need to get their heads straight.

OGG 4 LIFE.

I’ll take an imperfect freedom over a perfect cage.

Questions:

1. If Flash does not work on iPhone, how do people watch YouTube on iPhone? (sorry i dont own a iPhone)

2. Nobody mentioned SilverLight and JavaFX here. Why?

I have only had problems with Flash when it was a flash based game or something similar. And usually only when I was on wifi. so blame it on dropped packets or connection hopping.
The Mac vs PC thing is tired. Mac’s are really not that much more expensive than PC’s if you compare similarly fitted machines (with software!) of the same quality. Comparisons to emachines and Acer are just silly. OTOH Macs don’t just work. I don’t know how many times I have had to rescue friends and family members because they bought a “Mac compatible” device that needed more than plug-n-play interaction to get it working. They also are not virus immune. I have seen an entire mac lab taken down by a virus. There also are several trojan variants out there in torrent land that turn you perfect mac into a rogue DNS.

Reality, apple is retarded for not letting flash play on iphones/ipods/ipads. Especially since Adobe CS had got to be one of the leading software packages people buy Macs to use. But it’s not a Mac only suite. What if Adobe, out of spite, just delayed the mac version of CS5 by a few months just to be jerks? Ot made the copy protection more onerous since the Mac platform has got to be their number one piracy concern. (really, did you PAY for that copy of Photoshop on your Mac?).
Some software requires an iLok or other dongle scheme in order to work.
And yes I dont use iTunes on my PC anymore because of Bonjour and other such bloatware crap. My Mac mini is my dedicated iTunes box now.

in their case the matter is why they are still afloat as business – these kind of clients http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com/ must go biowaste

“There is no reason to assume that HTML5 will be faster and stabler than Flash. You can write bad code in any development environment.”

please don’t use your assumptions as truth-in-last-instance — Flash is not free (i.e. can not be changed without Adobe moving fingers) and will always be a plugin, hence they will never be anything but sluggish, unreliable piece of Adobe inserted here and there, until we have guts and kick their arse off the web, substituted with clean, simple, yet well-defined open standard. Yes, it also means Adobe goes back it Photoshop&etc caves, and Flash site designers have to go classes or change job.

Flash is what RealVideo “was”. The sooner it goes away the better.

“What if Adobe, out of spite, just delayed the mac version of CS5 by a few months just to be jerks?”

Past tense – This has already happened. Adobe and Apple have been playing games such as the above since the late 80′s. I think it began with Truetype/TrueImage – an Apple/Microsoft collaboration which targeted Adobe’s PostScript dominance.

Note also recent stories about BING becoming the default search setting on Apple products. Could that have anything to do with a falling out with Google? Nah! Surely not!

that cannot be. Macs just work.

I think Flash is getting old, HTML5 will make Flash obsolete one day. Flash needs to evolve into something more compact and faster otherwise they see imminent death obviously. Fast things I like, slow things I don’t like, it’s simple as that. I refuse to even install Adobe Air because of its slow speed and bloating my OS. Well, that’s another story but seriously, speed is what’s all about.

[...] Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch Defends Flash, Warns HTML5 Will Throw The Web “Back To The Dark Ages Of Vide… Adobe’s Flash technology has been taking a beating lately. Apple still won’t support it on its upcoming iPad or its iPhone. Steve Jobs calls it buggy and crash-prone and dismisses Adobe as being lazy. Adobe is trying to fight the negative vibes emanating from Cupertino and elsewhere. It has already pointed out that it will be easy to convert Flash apps into iPad apps, and now CTO Kevin Lynch is weighing in to defend Flash. [...]

[...] iPhone, iPod Touch, and now the iPad. So much in fact that Adobe’s CTO felt compelled to defend Flash and discredit HTML5 video warning that “users and content creators would be thrown back [...]

[...] Editor’s note: This is a guest post written by Jeremy Allaire, founder and CEO of Brightcove. Prior to Brightcove, Jeremy founded Allaire Corporation which was subsequently acquired by Macromedia due to the success of their web development tool ColdFusion. At Macromedia, Jeremy helped create the Macromedia MX (Flash) platform. You can see a recent interview of Jeremy here. As one of the guys who helped build the Flash Platform, we asked him to weigh in on the recent HTML5 v. Flash debate. [...]

This has got nothing to do with bugs in flash. I have worked with both companies as a developer for years and its all to do with who has the biggest d&&k. Oh and yes I own a few MAC’s and a few PC’s !!

Does anyone remember when Quicktime used to play flash files (v6 and earlier)? Well that was Apples implementation of flash and why was it suddenly dropped from Quicktime, was that because of bugs (apples)? NO it was because Flash got into H264 streaming and rained on apples parade thats why. Wonder why you cannot any longer export Keynote as flash? Is that anything to do with buggy playback? No
Why cant you add a flash file to an iWeb project? Anything to do with playback issues (on somebody elses browser !!) No
Why will Apple not let Flash use hardware acceleration on their MAC graphics cards? Is that anything to do with bugs NO

The simple fact is that Apple are like babies (well certain execs are) and take their toys home the minute someone gets in their way. They simply cannot fight by innovation at the software level as you cant put sexy industrial design into software.

The user suffers because of these egos who want to dominate the market but want to dominate not by appealing to the community but by stifling the competition.

Jobs probably reads Sun Tzu every day :)

Flash will beat the html5

Flash is the Internet experience but that puts a lot of the Internet in the hands of one company. They get to decide what operating systems get to enjoy the Internet, when and how smooth the experience is. I don’t see Apple pushing to change that as a bad thing.

Adobe has known that Apple was depreciating Carbon and moving to x64 probably longer than any other company yet their Photoshop is virtually unchanged from 20 years ago with more bullet point features.

Apple wants to control the user experience and have some timeline or plan for addressing things that don’t work well. Leaving your Internet stability in the hands of a company that doesn’t seem to care much about timely updates does not seem like a prudent business plan. Would you want such a sluggish and indifferent company trying to bypass all security, drivers and system stability to access the hardware directly when technologies like OpenCL were put into place specifically for that purpose?

If I had a guess why Quicktime stopped supporting Flash is Adobe enhanced it beyond the point where it was easy to emulate easily (and probably a few patents thrown in as well). Perhaps the closed source nature of Flash put off the iWork team as well. As to iWeb you can pretty much drop in any code snippet Flash or otherwise into current versions.

That said I am running the Flash 10.1 beta on my Mac and it is remarkably stable. I am looking forward to an x64 version.

For an example of HTML5 check out
http://9elements.com/io/projects/html5/canvas/
(A visual #html5 twitter interface)

[...] Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch Defends Flash » [...]

Just because you ran into errors doesn’t mean its a Flash issue. It could easily be a bug introduced by the developer of that ad or app or whatever you are looking at.

There is nothing more wrong about Flash than other software. They all have bugs, Flash is no exception. However, I’ve been developing in Flash for many years and it is a very stable platform, even on Mac.

Most people don’t consider that SJ might be bad mouthing Flash simply because they don’t want the competition in their app store.

You are right: “Smug and wrong are not a pretty combination.”

Show me how to build a rich, functional, portable object-oriented game in HTML 5 (or anything else) that runs on any OS or any browser, and I’ll ditch Flash. Until then, Flash is ahead of the game and works fine if you understand Actionscript. Most Flash Player errors are from development errors made by the Flash programmer, not by Flash itself. I don’t think most people realize how much web content is based on Flash, and how shitty the web would be without it (at present).

I can tell you the secret to why Google wants to avoid Flash: Because it’s hard for their search spider to get inside SWF and properly process what it finds there. Google is a great company but it’s backward of them to push a standard for their search needs when doing so will basically lower the interactive options of the web.

[...] to download a plug-in to use and powers the vast majority of web video today.  Of course, Adobe argues that HTML5 will throw back web video into “the dark ages” while HTML5 supporters claim [...]

[...] Cada año me encanta unirme a la turba iracunda en las cruzadas contra Flash, pero este año -con la salida del iPad- el chisme se puso especialmente bueno con Steve Jobs criticando directamente a Adobe/Flash y los empleados, y el CEO de Adobe defendiendose. [...]

HTML5 gaining on Flash?…

If you have been following the popular press on Apple’s problems with Flash or if you own an iPhone, you know that Apple and Adobe have had long running arguments about Flash.  Developers and tech geeks have been taking sides on this issues too. …

Apple has its own agenda in the HTML5 wars because it holds a patent to HTML5 tech.

We wrote all about it here on “I’d rather be a Woz.”:
http://blog.nothinggrinder.com/id-rather-be-a-woz

One thing that Flash has going for it is that so many web sites already have embedded Flash components.

And even if everyone started using Ipads tomorrow, it would take AT LEAST another 5 years before all of those established web to be redesigned so they could support the “new standard”.

In contrast, it would take much less time for a competitor to flood the market with cheaper Flash-compatible Ipad substitutes which would provide a better user-experience.

@ Mark A.

Follow your own advice: Google Street View isn’t Flash. It’s JavaScript.

@ Mark A.

Apologies, I should follow my own advice.

Flash “Killer” : JavaScript + HTML5 + SVG.

?

Adobe should open source Flash and thus make HTML5 completely irrelevant. The only reason why HTML5 has any momentum to it is because many prefer complete transparency when it comes to internet technologies.

Listen you morons. You can’t write games in HTML5. Anyone who thinks it’s a flash killer doesn’t know the first thing about code. If you don’t know anything about it, quit spouting nonsense; you make yourself sound stupid.
Since Apple refuses to let us write apps for the iphone or ipad and distribute them outside their store, and since now they’re banning average developers from cross-compiling code from platforms like Flash, Unity3d, HaXe and Java, they’re basically shooting themselves in the foot. HTML5 will be around, but it won’t run games and at best, the video will be nowhere near Flash standards — especially for anything more complex than a straight stream. You certainly won’t see anything really interactive written that way. And you can bet that whatever the next killer video networking app is, for reasons either Adobe-related or AT&T-related, Apple will fail to support it on their devices. They’re shooting themselves in the foot. They ultimately don’t have the hardware market share to support the kind of lock they’re trying to keep on software development.

So all you people with your HTML5 nonsense, please STFU. I guarantee I can code circles around you in Javascript and HTML5, Flash, or whatever else you please. This has nothing to do with evangelizing for one platform over another; it has to do with Apple, who I’ve always been a fan of, pulling a maneuver Microsoft would be proud of, by telling us what languages we can write our code in and what we can and can’t write on their machines. Screw them. Their vision of a sanitized, closed little iUniverse isn’t going to last very long when people realize how much they can’t do with an iPad.

do you have an idea what it takes to open source flash player. i think google servers can't hold that much data.

i am talking about FP10.1 with separate code for hundreds of platforms. and yes, there is a code for the iPhone as well it is deprecated at the moment because of Jobs.

and what complete transparency is concerned, browser developers already have the code, it was written by adobe, that is the only way to ensure consistency. anyway, why do you need it for. if you create a browser and it has a future adobe will do it for you, because it is their interest.

the file type specifications are also transparent. if you what, you can generate flash from php, adobe doesn't mind.

turning back to the player. i think it is essential to be written and updated only by 1 independent company.

we don't what to wake up with 80 different major flash players over night, do we.
3 different major html "players" is enough struggle for the moment.