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.
The recent introduction of the new Apple iPad has stirred the discussion over the future of web content and application runtime formats, and shone light onto the political and business battles emerging between Apple, Adobe and Google. These discussion are often highly polarized and irrational. My hope in this post is to help provide some balance and clarity onto this discussion.
I have a particularly unique perspective, stake and role in this discussion. My first company (Allaire) was born during the advent of the Web, with the idea that a browser and HTML could form the basis for creating content-rich, interactive software applications, ones that didn’t require native code and could be platform and operating system independent. We built ColdFusion as a way to realize this vision. We later became deeply committed to the world of HTML as a developer format, acquiring and building HomeSite, what was the world’s dominant Windows-based HTML authoring application.
In 2000, it became clear to me that web applications and runtimes were not advancing fast enough, and that with the emerging world of broadband internet connectivity that an entirely new realm of rich internet applications would be possible. We (Allaire and Macromedia) merged our companies with the vision that a new class of browser-based applications would emerge, and that we could evolve Macromedia Flash Player from its origins as an animation and motion-graphics engine into a real application platform and rich client runtime that fused media (text, audio, images, video), communications (web services, real-time APIs) and interactivity (rich client-side object model and UI component framework). In March of 2002 we launched the Macromedia MX Platform, anchored around the new Flash runtime, and realized this vision for the transformation of the Web experience and enabling a new class of rich, browser-based applications.
For several years, the Flash Platform was unique in its ability to create highly interactive browser based applications. Around 2003-2004 HTML/JavaScript (Ajax) started to meaningfully emerge as a competing approach to building apps on the Web. Meanwhile, as new Flash Players shipped, it’s ubiquity ensured that the birth of the online video industry would be largely built on Flash. This gave birth to everything from YouTube and Brightcove and Hulu, to hundreds of other online video companies.
Today, my company sits at the center of these new battles over the future of web content and app formats and runtimes. We work with thousands of media publishers who aim to maximize the distribution, reach and user opportunities with their content. This new re-fracturing of web content runtimes is creating challenges (and opportunities) for us and our peers.
A Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Developers (and Audiences!)
I think it’s critical to first frame and understand this discussion with the broader political economy of Internet software platforms. Most of the debate and discussion over HTML5 vs. Flash vs. Native Apps has little to do with what is the right technical approach, or whether something is open or closed, it has to do with the expressions of power and control that drive the businesses of the Internet’s dominant platform companies — Apple, Adobe, Google and Microsoft.
Each of these companies seeks to create unique runtimes and APIs that provide a strategic wedge that can drive other aspects of their business. At one level this is a battle for the hearts and minds of developers and ISVs, but these developers are merely a means to an end. Gaining broad adoption for their runtime platforms translates into their ability to create massive derivative value through downstream products and services. For Apple, this is hardware and paid media (content and apps) sales. For Google, this is about creating massive reach for their advertising platforms and products. For Adobe, this about creating major new applications businesses based on their platform. For Microsoft, it is about driving unit sales of their core OS and business applications.
Web Apps and Content
I’m often asked “Will HTML5 replace Flash?” on the Web. The quick answer is no. However, there is a lot of nuance here and it’s helpful to make the distinction between two broad classes of content applications that are deployed in browsers.
First, there are what I would call Web Productivity Apps. These kinds of applications require responsive, cross-platform, desktop like and highly interactive experiences. They often require seamless integration with existing web content and data. For several years, the Flash Platform was the best platform for creating these types of applications (per above). However, in the past several years, HTML+JavaScript (Ajax) and now HTML5 have created a highly compelling framework to build these applications, and for a large number of web productivity apps, the HTML5 approach will become the preferred model. The best examples are Google Apps, Salesforce.com, and even Microsoft’s forthcoming Office Online. There are also a class of Web Productivity Apps where Flash is the preferred runtime, especially those that involve working with and manipulating media such as images, audio and video. We, like many companies, are pragmatic and use both Flash and HTML as the technology needs require. Other examples of this include rich data visualization applications, where Flash has gained prominence inside of enterprises because of its rich data and visualization features.
The second broad class of applications are what I would call Rich Media Apps. These kinds of applications include largely consumer-facing, audience and media centric experiences. In particular, this includes online video, rich media advertising and marketing, and online games (casual games). All of these kinds of applications are highly focused on having a great and immersive experience that just works, and the creators of these apps are very focused on audience reach — anything that impedes 100% consumer acceptance is a significant concern. Here, Flash is dominant. The unique runtime characteristics of Flash, combined with its incredible reach, has led these types of apps to become highly dependent on Flash, and massive amounts of the broadband economy are dependent on it. It seems unlikely that HTML5 would be at all positioned to replace Flash for these categories, though it is clearly worth watching how consistent rich media runtimes find their way into the HTML5+ standard. Right now, it is a non starter.
The Handheld Disruption
Much of the above classes of content applications are in reference to the PC/Browser-based Web. The explosive growth in hand-held computing has introduced an entirely new dynamic into the content and app run-time battles which in turn will have a cascading impact on the PC Web. Hand-held computing includes smartphones (iPhone, Android, Nokia, et. al), portable music/entertainment devices and tablet computing devices (iPad and Android devices).
In many respects, the successful launch and growth of these devices has created an entirely new and largely blank canvas for content and applications. First, these devices offer new native services and OS-specific features (location, multi-touch UI, local media, wireless networking APIs, cameras, offline) that are giving birth to a massive new class of non-Web Apps that are built using proprietary native-code APIs and runtimes. Because of always-on broadband connectivity and easy to discovery App Stores, there has been rapid adoption of these new “disposable content apps”.
Hand-held platforms create a new opportunity for platform vendors to disrupt runtime hegemony from platforms that have seen ascendance on the PC/Web, and controlling these new run-times and developer adoption of these runtimes has a direct impact on these platform vendors ability to own audience relationships and monetization opportunities. For example, a web-centric, HTML5-centric handheld world favors Google because it can leverage it’s existing dominance in search and web advertising. A proprietary App-centric universe favors Apple because it can become the primary gatekeeper to reaching the mobile audience and already has a pole position in integrating payments and advertising into content applications.
In the case of hand-held platforms, however, it seems quite apparent that it is not a zero-sum game. Three runtime platforms will gain adoption and often even inter-mingle — HTML5 content and apps, Native Apps (that may contain Flash and HTML content), and HTML5 apps that contain and leverage Flash Player. There is a rich pallet of capabilities emerging, and each developer will need to consider what will be appropriate for their specific audience or application. It is also clear that the adoption of these diverse run-time platforms has the real potential to reconstitute fundamental relationships to audiences and monetization systems.
Video as a Cornerstone Issue
I’m also often asked “Will HTML5 Video replace Flash Video?”. Posited as a winner-take-all, absolute, the answer is clearly no. But like the nuance of HTML5 vs. Flash on the Web, there is also a very nuanced and complex evolving landscape in the video format world.
On the PC/Web, video has gained enormous momentum as a fundamental media type for all content on the Web. This has largely been driven by the adoption of Flash Video, which has approximately 75% market-share for online video. For most web and content app developers, this is fine, it is a great run-time and offers an excellent user experience and Adobe has done a very good job keeping the platform contemporary with the most demanding needs of video delivery and quality.
It is the rapid emergence of hand-held devices, however, that is bringing this issue to the forefront. With massive growth in hand-held web browsing from smartphones, iTouch devices and the pending iPad product, this has raised a deeper issue for media publishers who are eager to have their content be accessible to end-users. In particular, it is the show-down between Apple, Google and Adobe over who can control video formats on these devices that is creating challenges. Again, this is not about “what is the right technical solution”, it is about the political economy of who controls the formats that in turn lead to owning downstream audience and monetization opportunities.
The basic idea behind HTML5 video is that there would be a common video format that could be placed and rendered into any compatible web browser, conceptually replacing the need for the Flash run-time to render video in browsers. But there are enormous challenges with this, some political, some technical and some based on audience behavior.
First, right now, there is a lack of common approach among browser makers on what format to use for the HTML video object. This lack of agreement represents a proxy for broader political battles. Apple promotes MPEG-4/H.264, which it uses for it’s device platforms. Microsoft promotes VC-1, it’s own standard video codec. Google has yet to fully weigh-in on what format to support, which leads me to speculate that they will soon introduce a new format, based on On2 VP8, but under a broad open source license to the format and technology. Firefox, with 24% share of the browser market, proposes to use the open source Ogg Vorbis codec. What few people realize is that while H.264 appears to be an open and free standard, in actuality it is not. It is a standard provided by the MPEG-LA consortsia, and is governed by commercial and IP restrictions, which will in 2014 impose a royalty and license requirement on all users of the technology. How can the open Web adopt a format that has such restrictions? It can’t. Google will make an end-run on this by launching an open format with an open source license for the technology, which according to industry experts delivers almost all of the same technical benefits as H.264. All of this is a long way of saying that there is still significant format tension and that it will take a long time for it to be resolved in next-gen browsers.
Second, but related, is the raw reality of browser adoption and churn cycles, and the fact that online video publishers will only adopt standards that have extremely broad adoption. Until penetration rates consistently reach 80%, it will be hard for publishers to switch and adopt a single, new solution. It is more likely that HTML5 Video adoption will reach that critical mass on hand-held devices before it does on the PC/Web.
Third, and equally important, is the more practical issue of the massive industry-wide ecosystem support for Flash Video. From advertising formats, to business logic for the interaction of video with ads and analytics, hundreds of 3rd party technology companies who have built solutions around online video that are built on Flash, not to mention high quality design and authoring tools that sit at the center of a large labor market for Flash design and development; all of this creates inertia for Flash and a relatively high industry-wide switching cost.
But stepping back and looking at this specifically in the context of hand-held computing, where Apple is politically motivated to block the Flash runtime, it is apparent video publishers will be driven to build and operate solutions that leverage HTML5 Video on mobile and iPad browsing environments.
It’s All About Reach
Whether on the supply side of content and applications, or on the distribution and run-time side of the equation, what is abundantly clear is that reach is still king. For platform makers, these battles will continue as they all seek to drive sufficient reach for their open and proprietary standards such that they can exploit this distribution for their core commercial goals. Likewise, and more important, whatever standards and models deliver the broadest reach will ultimately drive what is adopted by publishers, developers and ISVs.
While it is easy to take a binary position in the future of content applications and run-times, it is evident that the competing interests of platform vendors, consumers and app and content publishers will ensure that this remains a fragmented and competitive environment for many years to come.
Too bad Brightcove’s support is HORRIBLE.
Mobile will go HTML5. The rest of the Web will stay Flash. Let’s not fantasize around HTML5 as a viable option for the Web in general. IE (90%+ market share worldwide) does not support it.
IE is at 60% market share and going down. HTML5 will probably replace Flash even on the desktop.
Did you even read the article?
Yeah I did. Flash is still fucked. The code base is a sewage-stinking ball of spaghetti code that has long since become utterly unmaintainable. It is being maintained by one company in a closed manner. Apple were perfectly happy to ship Flash on the iPhone if Adobe could meet their specifications for stability and battery management, but they couldn’t. They can’t even keep up with the critical security problems, let alone the bugs.
Compare to HTML5, an open platform with several excellent open implementations for both creation and display. The leading HTML5 browser engine, webkit, is a high priority project for both Apple and Google, with contributions from Nokia and many others.
There are countless stakeholders with an interest in seeing HTML5 thrive as a platform. Flash has only one real backer – Adobe. They can fight as hard as they like, they’re outnumbered by bigger companies with smarter developers.
“The code base is a sewage-stinking ball of spaghetti code that has long since become utterly unmaintainable” – What is your basis for this statement? Have you seen the code? Regardless, Flash 10.1 offers a dramatic improvement in performance over previous versions which is why all smartphone manufacturers aside form Apple will be supporting it.
“Apple were perfectly happy to ship Flash on the iPhone if Adobe could meet their specifications for stability and battery management” – I sincerely doubt this although obviously it’s in Jobs’ interest to promote this as the major reason. Again, if Flash 10.1 performs acceptably on all other smartphones, where will this argument stand?
HTML5 also has a big blocker in Microsoft which, although waning in influence, will still be able to f*ck the web for many years to come.
Joe is correct, flash blows, it is the minivan of tech automobiles. This long winded post did nothing more than state the obvious. The author is deluded in his analysis of native apps. They will always be the preferred interface, trying to explain away flash shortcommings with naieve opinions will leave him floundering in his spagetti, as we all move on leaving him in the past. He got lucky with flash, but his current understanding of tech is stuck in the 20 century. Fail post.
Flash 10.1 is becoming available on all major mobile platforms except the iPhone. When adoption increases quickly there will be less incentive for people to covert Flash based video delivery to HTML5. Sure Apple has the leverage right now but it will evaporate quickly. They cannot influence the entire mobile world like they think they can.
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 with him on that and there is no way a Android phone will ever be able to compete with the Iphone I have had both and trust me the android OS has alot of improvement especially with being open source but the ability of the newest versions of Android doesn’t even compare to what the iphone can do now.
And there is no flash support for Android either so yah I do believe that Adobe is lazy.
Details: http://bit.ly/apple-ipad-scrutinized-details
I encounter MANY MORE pages which crash due to bad javascript than bad Flash – it’s amazing to me that no one seems to pick up on this. As for the android vs iphone – the nexus one is at LEAST the equal of the the iPhone. I would never switch back to the iPhone after having experienced the Nexus – but what on earth does this have to do with Flash?
Sure, bobby, but Javascript errors rarely crash the whole browser, or interfere with other applications. Just today, I had to reboot my Mac because some Flash garbage was interfering with Photoshop Elements. Hmm, two Adobe products that can’t even play nicely together.
Flash is horrible at managing its memory and resources. I routinely have issues with the sound system being hijacked by one of my daughters playing a Flash game on their login. When their time is up, the Mac uses “fast user switching” to basically hibernate the processes running for the other user. When I login, sorry, no sound for you. I have to log into my daughter’s account (adding time) and then specifically log her out so that the Flash unloads (sort of — you never know what lingers with such a stinker like Flash), then go back to my login and behold, let their be sound.
And don’t get me started on the poor performance of the system and high fan speeds when a Flash app is running.
Flash crashes when bad developers write bad script for it. If those bad developers switched over to HTML 5 and started writing bad Javascript are you going to start blaming HTML 5 for being unstable? And any claim that HTML 5 can’t be just as resource intensive as Flash is naive. Anyone can write a HTML 5 app that will bring your phone or desktop to its knees.
The real reason Apple doesn’t want Flash on it’s iProducts is because doing so would completely bypass the App Store and Apple wouldn’t get a piece of every program allowed to run on the device. Get real people, this performance/HTML 5 savior bullshit is just a smoke screen and it’s funny to see all the lemmings fall right into place.
Where do you get that number? The websites I manage are very mainstream and are at 54.77% for IE (all versions).
Flash itself isn’t so bad, it’s the poorly written Flash applications that give it a bad name.
Unless of course, you have some sort of special access to all of Adobe’s code yourself?!
I agree. More to the point, has anyone considered how many more browser crashes we’ll have as HTML5 gets more powerful and n00bs start using advanced features of HTML5 instead of Flash?
Jeremy… there’s no such thing as an “iTouch.”
iPod Touch or is this a new device apple working on..?????
@jeremy On th whole this is a good post
I think he is using that term to generically refer to a broad class of mobile device that is not a phone. You read all that and that is all you came away with? Go back to your little world and do a podcast or something.
Jeremy Allaire is my hero, srsly. I think I’ve even creeped him out by telling him that a few times.
Allaire is a true Internet Giant…
Jobs (a device maker) is learning the Internet now that he has the iPhone.
Jobs is about to learn that The Internet is, above all, about Freedom.
right on! i’ve been saying this all along too! why would anyone want to not choose the information they receive on their computers for themselves? not have Steve Jobs make this decision for you! that is just strange and creepy to me.
HTML 5 has nothing to do with Steve Jobs.
what? care to elaborate?
Yeah.. Because Steve didn’t pay his employees to build the first (and best) HTML5 render engine (webkit) that empowers: iphone, android, palm webOs, google chrome & safari?? That horrible ma… Oh wait…
The problem with that statement is that while Apple has a horrible track record with their proprietary development model, and I have personally been bitten, their web scenarios are about as open as they get. WebKit is open source and as others have mentioned, supported by many in the mobile industry.
If web succeeds, Apple succeeds. If apps make the difference, Apple succeeds more. So, I fail to see how they are in a poor position.
> Jobs needs to “learn the internet”?
Uh. I dunno mate. iTunes has been a factor for how many years now?
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Jeremy, has Google made a decision with the YouTube adoption of H.264? It’s the only way I watch YouTube videos. Using ClickToFlash I proceed to load the H.264 and it seems to be available immediately.
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Jeremy thanks for your article, it’s a balance we’ve not heard here, elsewhere, or definitely not in the “social web” (cough::TC commenters::cough).
I agree that Flash will remain a compelling platform for rich presentation applications.
I wonder if games will all go native, witness the explosion on iPhone.
People say Hulu doesn’t work w/o Flash, but, there is a desktop app for Hulu and I believe if Hulu wants to be on the device they will be Flash or no Flash.
FYI – Hulu Desktop still uses flash.
@mate,
iTunes?
You’re equating iTunes with The Internet?
That speaks volumes to what I’m saying about Apple and Jobs being relative newcomers to the Web.
iTunes is a store… amigo.
good read, but I hope you’re wrong. With the fragmentation that you write about, and what you call a rich pallet.. people are not focusing on building solid apps, but trying to put this jigsaw of technology together.
I would much rather prefer everybody agree onopeness.. HTML5, using ogg vorbis video codec, and lets all move on to the next challenge. Make sure every users browser is interoperable and that no matter what device they are using the experience is generally the same.
i meant theora , but vorbis too.
You know, I do not mean to sound very sarcastic but this is like asking for “world peace” in a beauty contest.
There is simply too much “business and money” involved for people to step down and agree in a unified format that would make the experience to the developer and user seamless without any hassle.
I do want to believe with you though.
When I started building SlideRocket a few years ago, it became quickly clear that Flash/Flex was the only viable way for me to deliver a vision of a full-featured rich-media presentation tool on the web.
Maybe some might think this is naive, but, as a developer, I don’t care about open standards – I care about using a platform that provides me the functionality and performance I need and has the reach to ensure that adoption across my customers in not an issue. Flash and the Flex framework fits both these requirements in abundance.
One might argue that Adobe controls my destiny but it seems that our business interests coincide – they want to continually improve their platform and i want to use the best platform available – and so I don’t live in fear that one day Adobe will sabotage SlideRocket (even though they compete with us somewhat).
Ironically, your desire to ensure that all browsers are interoperable and that the experience is the same, is EXACTLY the vision that Flash provides and why I chose to adopt it. History (and current progress) shows that HTML5 probably won’t be able to.
So, in the end, I’ll take one semi-closed platform controlled by a single company vs. an open standard deployed across five competing browsers on their own release cycles.
“Maybe some might think this is naive, but, as a developer, I don’t care about open standards – I care about using a platform that provides me the functionality and performance I need and has the reach to ensure that adoption across my customers in not an issue.”
Indeed. However, when you run into bugs against that platform and cannot fix them (or even begin to investigate them) due to the closed nature of the platform, you might start to get annoyed.
But this is a perfect point for the advantage of Flash! If it’s a Flex framework bug – i CAN fix it because that’s opensource and only exists in my project. If it’s a Flash player bug, yes, I need Adobe to fix it. But, at least, when they do – they can push out a point release to every browser very quickly.
The counterpoint is I encounter a bug in some component of HTML5. Is it realistic to think I’m going to crack open WebKit and figure out to fix it? What if it’s IE or Safari specific? And even if i do fix it, how does it get deployed? Now there are 4 or 5 browsers that need to incorporate the fix and push out new versions. How many years will that take? This is what frustrates me about this opensource is better argument – in practical terms it’s worthless to me unless I plan to build my own browser.
Is it realistic? If you’re a programmer and interested and/or experienced in browser development, absolutely!
As far as deployment goes, modern browsers do a pretty good job of updating themselves regularly. I’d say modern browsers are roughly on bar, if not better than the Flash plugin itself, at auto updating. And critical security updates will get pushed out pretty quickly.
The alternative is to have critical bugs languishing in the Flash plugin that no one is interested in fixing. E.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1105508
Steven, that’s fixed in 10.1:
http://blogs.adobe.com/emmy/archives/2010/02/flash_bug_repor.html
Adobe missed that one at the time and they’ve apologized. How many times have Microsoft fixed a bug in IE because you asked them?
“However, when you run into bugs against that platform and cannot fix them (or even begin to investigate them) due to the closed nature of the platform, you might start to get annoyed.”
Sure you can investigate what’s causing the problem, what you are doing in your code to cause this bug and then once you’ve isolated it, report it to Adobe in their bug and issue management system for the Flash Player:
http://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer/
If it’s a serious bug that Adobe can reproduce, they are pretty good at fixing it and rolling it out in the next version of Flash.
The argument that this happens with browsers, doesn’t really hold up when we still have quite a number of users still using old buggy versions of IE6.
Yeah I’ve been through that whole song and dance as a Flash developer. Unfortunately, quite often, the bugs then sit around in the tracker for years without a fix.
For example, one bug that many of us have been asking about for years: https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-721
Or how about http://flashcrash.dempsky.org/ , which not only crashes Flash, but takes down Safari too. Seems to have been reported to Adobe as long as 16 months ago and still needs to be addressed!
@Sajid, that’s fixed in 10.1. See above.
@Steven, the bug that you have mentioned looks more like an issue with certain browsers not exposing header information to plugins through NPAPI rather than an issue with Flash player.
The problem is that Theora is an inefficient codec in terms of compression. It is also unsuitable for mobile platforms because, as I understand it, there is currently no hardware acceleration available for encoding/decoding in this format. A big part of why Apple uses H.264 is the availability of hardware accelerators for iPod/iPhone.
For the forseeable future smart phone apps are the place to be.
Largely web only businesses that haven’t got a meaningful app presence are in big trouble.
Mobile web businesses are a minute section of overall commercial web presence, for all the multi billion investment in weird arsed app start-ups.
I can forsee the mobile market going the same way as the dot-com bubble. There are far too many companies borrowing far too much money with far too litle to show for it other than hype and ‘coolness’.
There is a future in the mobile web, but what is on show now is more smoke and mirrors than sound business practice.
http://www.siri.com doesn’t look like smoke and mirrors, leverages US$150M+ of DARPA investment in AI, and is shipping (US only, though)
iPod touch and iPhone are collectively known as the iTouch devices. Way to be a douchebag.
Jeremy Allaire’s practical and future-tensed insights to the issue of HTML 5 vs Flash are valid and useful.
I run a predominantly Apple Macintosh-driven multimedia network. I am concerned the push against Flash may not be in Apple’s strategic interest; in the context of the CS Suite of apps from the same Adobe which many of us find very valuable. Shred of all sentiments, and knowing Google runs to win 100% of the market, what Steve Jobs and the guardians at Apple Inc should respond and seek immediate answers to these 2 questions:
1. should Apple work with Adobe to improve Flash and its integration and flex capacities across the platforms of Apple?
2. Should Apple optimize its long standing collabo with Adobe to enhance the interact-ability and finesse of Flash before (yes, before and soon) Google leverages the power of its search platform, Chrome, Chrome OS and Android to push the broader, open source alternative to the walled-gardens of the other tech behemoths?
Among other Apple devices and computers, I own the iPhone and iPod Touch, I’m always disappointed when I am unable to view any resource/webpage/video due to the error that largely says ‘this Apple device does not allow the use of Flash….’ Will the iPad offer a bridge or resolution before March 31, 2010?
Hopefully, Google’s brutal, non-sentimental push will awaken the Apple execs at Cupertino to really “think differently” into 2010, and beyond.
Google will gladly, again without any sentiments, “do evil” and overwhelm any techno-eco-systems of Apple’s prior or existing dominance. Although, I believe that the iPod ecosystem has created an irreversible techno-power and financial juice maker for Apple into the next 20 years. The elements and organic logic, apps and product synergy are still unmatched.
Last point, I have always wondered since 2001 why Apple has not bought Adobe for the sake of PhotoShop, Flash; now, moreso, for InDesign!
What do I know?
Chido Nwangwu
Founder & Publisher, USAfricaonline.com, first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper to be published on the internet. Chido@USAfricaonline.com
I have to say that I never notice websites with Flash on my iPhone. The best ones have workarounds. Sites like the New York Times have full apps. While I access search and the web in the form of applications, I rarely access straight web sites except for various Google domains.
My belief in the cloud is that we will have fragmentation of channels, but a solid core of data. This data will be accessed by hybrid applications and web views. Slowly, the web will take over increasing amounts of the heavy lifting.
You can count on Adobe not devoting the resources to getting Flash to be clean across mobile platforms. If they pull off that miracle they deserve to become a central component to the mobile web. They are quickly frittering away their opportunity however.
Precisely. But with recent hostile remarks by Steve Jobs, I don’t see it happening in any kind of near future. Things are certainly shaping up as an Apple vs Google v Adobe scenario for the exact reasons cited. Apple and Adobe’s collaboration, once rock-solid, has cooled significantly in recent years. And Creative Pros, Adobe’s base market, are far less courted by Apple as they relentlessly pursue affluent mainstream media-consumer users.
I think your emotional attachment to your old company hinders your ability to see the situation from an outsiders perspectives. If Hulu and YouTube drop Flash, Adobe is in serious trouble. You know YouTube is only a matter of time until it drops it since its already in a beta mode. And as for Hulu, I don’t think they would be more than a year or two behind if YouTube goes.
LOL.
Hulu will never have a HTML5 video website, because there’s no way to protect their content using the video tag. Right click on any HTML5 video element and you get the “Save video as…” where you can download the video source. Any content provider (studios/networks) that wants to protect their content will go with a plugin like Flash.
yeah your comment is answered here http://gizmodo.com/5461711/giz-explains-why-html5-isnt-going-to-save-the-internet
and like matfabb says drm. the industry, you know those content creaters and their riaa posse and ascap and all that shit want to make sure they are protected and that their stuff is being put on a worthy worthwhile channel…so lol.
+1. Flash CS3 had some ridiculous bugs in it. For instance, create more than 300 movie clips, and simply renaming an object takes 10 seconds for the library to refresh. And I’m on a Quad core with 6 gb ram!!!
Flash CS4 (10.0.0) similarly had inexcusable bugs. Write an actionscript longer than 50 lines, and the editor is virtually unusable.
Has the author of this article used Flash in awhile? He don’t thing he understands Developers’ pains.
I am a graphics and web designer, but having come to web from the print side, I am design-oriented as opposed to code oriented. I have yet to forgive Adobe for the wirehead pain that is Actionscript 3.
You need designer skills to create motion graphics, but serious programmer skills to have them DO anything useful. The two skillsets in one skull are a rare thing. Adobe’s model is that there is a development team in place. Not always an option for a one person shop with small business clients on limited budgets.
And Flash is a notoriously unforgiving development environment. Muck something up badly enough, it’s easier to trash the file and just start over.
The excitement over HTML5 isn’t due to the fact that it will replace Flash. Flash is obviously an entrenched platform that drove innovation during a period where browser innovation was completely stagnant (post IE/Netscape, pre Firefox/Chrome/Safari) and isn’t going away anytime soon.
The excitement is due to the fact that browser innovation is occurring again, in a standards compliant fashion, driven by companies like Apple, Google, and Mozilla. It marks a distinct contrast compared to several years ago when Microsoft’s dominance basically halted all browser innovation, creating an environment Flash was *required* in order to display video/rich media on the web.
The fact that the growth in the mobile space is driving browser innovation even faster is what makes things so interesting right now – browser market share is shifting towards mobile computing and is predicted to overtake desktop computing in the next few years.
you know that’s all great and everything for the future, especially since it looks like mobile might be the way to go, although i truly can’t get any design work or research done via that small screen and drained battery power, but i don’t browse primarly from a mobile unit. so i would just like these transitions to occur without as much hiccups as possible. htm5 and flash can co exist and even if it’s going to take years for it to become a web standard, it will come a time where people also write bad htm5 code which will get on the nerves of the general populous who don’t even bother to understand why flash is crashing their browser/computer.
If one can mention Flash in the same breath as HTML and the web, one can mention mobile applications as well. There is no shortage of mechanisms for building what Flash is apple to accomplish. Their is a shortage of developers!
If Adobe is not cleaning up their OS X incarnations of Flash as rapidly as possible they will lose the mobile web. It is difficult to dismiss half of the market. Should the mobile web outside of Apple thrive as a result of Flash, great! I doubt it however. Those devices are limited by connection speeds and such.
Great read.
I found it interesting that Mr. Allaire totally avoided the issue of poor Flash performance, both in terms of speed and power utilization (particularly on non-Windows, non-Intel platforms). Instead of confronting this issue, he frames the Flash on mobile issue as a primarily political/economic power struggle between corporate titans. While this undoubtedly an issue, and seems to be a big part of what’s going on, it glosses over what is probably one of the biggest problems with Flash right now, both on mobile and on non-Windows PCs.
Why is Flash video jerky on my Mac, but I can play 1080p H.264 video just fine?
Oh, right. Because Flash “is a great run-time and offers an excellent user experience”
Because you are comparing playing 1080p video over the web vs from your local harddisk? Maybe it’s your bandwidth?
Re: poor Flash performance. Flash is pretty darn optimized at this point but pushing pixels has always used CPU. HTML5 will be no different.
If you don’t believe that, check out this guys HTML5 demo which pegs my FireFox at 98% CPU!
http://blog.alastairdawson.com/2010/02/05/html5-vs-flash/
Bullshit. Flash is a slow, bloated, POS. It happens to be the only POS with market penetration, but it’s slow nonetheless.
As a game developer for 20 years, answer me this: How is it that games on a 386 run faster than similar games in Flash? We’re talking about computers that are easily 100X faster now, and Flash still runs slow doing simple bitmap blits.
Yes, you can get around it by a lot of code-jockeying, but for the vast majority of scenarios, Flash is ridiculously, inexcusably slow.
Hell, just try dragging a scrollbar or using a dropdown widget. These simple widgets are faster on a 128k Original Mac.
Sorry, you are just wrong. Both my wife and I have been developing in Flash since back when it was Futurewave Splash, and both of us have produced multiple casual games in Flash.
A well programed game in Flash can run beautifully on a system with even minimal specs. Most of the games my wife has produced have been for incredibly low minimum system requirements, including netbooks, and several of her coworkers even produce Flash games for mobile phones.
I think you are confusing poor Flash programming, with poor performance from the runtime. Any poorly written program in any language will run poorly. That isn’t the fault of the runtime, that is the fault of the developer.
No sorry, but you are wrong. Again, I’ve been a software developer for 20 years. Our company has collectively produced 3d engines in C++, Java, J2ME, etc. as well as Flash…. though I’m specifically talking about 2d operations in Flash.
Explain to me how the simplest widgets on either Flash or AIR run inexcusably slow? I’m talking about BUILT IN widgets, requiring no programming expertise at all. Again, this is on a Quad Core machine with nothing else running with 6gb of ram.
Sure, Flash runs fast enough for many things — but this is largely the result of faster computers rather than how *great* Flash is.
Dude, seriously, that’s you argument, that the pre-built modular drag and drop widgets are inefficient? Try programming! Those provided objects have always (since the Macromedia days) been bloated pieces of garbage, loaded down with a ton of unnecessarily complex code to handle swapping out graphics, and modularity, and multiple layers of error handling at the component level. I don’t know any paid Flash developer who just drags and drops those elements and calls it a day. Those things might be usable for a concept mockup, or someone who has no idea how to write Actionscript, but you don’t use them for production software! When you are actually developing a Flash project, you code purpose-built tools, which perform wonderfully. I didn’t even use those pre-built pieces of garbage back when I was doing CBTs, much less for games! That is like saying you cut and pasted some 3D simulation code from a textbook, and it ran like a dog, so C++ must be a crap language.
Uh no, if you read my original post, my main argument is that doing a bitmap blit is slow. And how do you suppose I know about this? It’s because I have to rely on XXX = new BitmapData(x, x, x, x); So yes indeed, I **AM** programming in ActionScript.
And yes, the built in widgets SHOULD be fast. Firstly, when using AIR, what widgets are you supposed to use, anyway? Creating your own widgets kindof defeats half the purpose of writing an AIR app. Secondly, we’re talking about computers that are easily 100X or 1000X faster than the original Mac. You’ve been using Flash too long to realize how bad it is.
Or let me put it to you much more simply. Director — that old, bloated, Macromedia/Adobe app with that horrible Lingo, Stage, etc. Even Director blows Flash away in terms of performance.
Sorry, no, I’ve built apps in Flash, Director, and Authorware, and Flash easily has the best performance of the three.
Is the Flash runtime faster than programing in a ‘real’ language and compiling the application? No, I never said it was, and I don’t think anyone did. Is Flash runtime performance better than trying to do the same thing with DHTML? Yes, quite a bit better. Is Flash runtime performance worse on a quad core processor than a C++ program running on a 68030? No, it isn’t. I don’t care what kind of language you are using, a 68030 can’t even decode a 320 x 240 MPEG1, while Flash on a modern processor can run 720p content at 30FPS. You can keep claiming it can’t all you want, but you are at best being hyperbolic, and at worst being flat-out dishonest.
Besides, just out of curiosity, how are you even drawing the comparison between bliting on an original Mac (256 shades of grey) and a modern machine (at least 16-bit RGB)? I mean, if you want to talk about director, then sure, with paletteized 256 color, it could do some pretty impressive things on low system specs. Bump that up to 16-bit or god forbid 24-bit, and it was a complete dog.
Silliness. Folks actually working with the technology know that the flash runtime has no parity across platforms when it comes to efficiency. This is well documented. Until the runtimes (any/all runtimes) efficiently leverage the GPU, they will not be viable on battery-dependent devices. Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming is a strong, smart play IMO.
Mitch,
I’m afraid you’re wrong about Flash not being a CPU/Memory hog. At the same time those who think Html 5 video is not, are wrong too.
The fact is Flash is a CPU drain, and so are the Html 5 video players. Now there is only one exception so far (since we haven’t seen IE’s implementation), and that is MAC Safari. Safari on MAC uses QT. Safari on PC does not.
QT and Windows Media player are by far *the* superior media players. You can check it out for yourselfs here.
Flash versus Html 5 Video versus Windows Media/Quick Time
you can play the same video in Flash player, a html 5 video player or the “Native” player (that is QT on MAC and Windows Media player on PC).
Those who think Html 5 video is somehow macgically better are totally wrong. As we can clearly see today, each browser’s implementation of video player is different and as a result the performance of video in each browser and platform will be different. So we’re really going backward.
Those on a MAC should try using Chrome to see if the same videos on the page linked to above perform the same. There is also an Ogg Theora version of the same video for Firefox folks and you’ll see the same problems with Firefox’s video player.
If we could somehow use Windows Media Player on PC and QT on MAC is all browsers then that’s the best solution. Of course these players will have to be completely customizable and scriptables as per the Html 5 video element. But then at most we’d be dealing with two players on two platforms.
But until that day Html 5 video is practically useless because it only causes more problems than it solves. I do mean “practically” as in not usable in the real world.
If you really want an answer to that question, it is because Apple forbids any hardware acceleration of video through anything but Quicktime. So, it isn’t that the Flash runtime is inefficient, it is that it has no access to the GPU, so has to do all decoding on a Mac with the CPU. On a Windows machine, however, it can use the GPU, and has quite good video playback. There is nothing Adobe can do about Apple locking out everything but their own proprietary format.
+1
Unfortunately, this fact is left out of many of the so-called “intelligent” discussions about Flash’s less than ideal performance on the Mac.
Flash performance has consistently been poorer on a Mac, no matter the CPU model. Period.
Hmm but HTML5 doesn’t seem to cripple my computer like Flash does. I switched to Chrome solely to browse YouTube in HTML5 and I must say the experiance is so much better (apart from the fact I see all the ads now).
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At my day job I have dealt with your customers, namely the Regis and Kelly show.
I would like to extend partnerships to license our technology and unique resources to other Content providers. I am aware that some of our services overlap and that is not what we are going to show off in our presentation. We are going to show technology other CDNs do not currently have. We invite you to come and to see what would be economically viable for you to leverage at Britecove.
The $60-100 event price is waived for you.
lol. it’s so nice of you to waive the fee.
Very comprehensive analysis. Thank you!
Interesting read.
I wonder how DRM will play in this situation.
If publishers will accept one format over the other.
Regular users on youtube probably don’t care about it, but i’m sure movie/tv studios very much care about it.
netflix and hulu and alike won’t be able to use a totally open and the best format unless it will also please studios in providing them with DRM controls.
I really thing that Real Player is going to make a sweeping comeback and shock is all. They plan to call it HTMLWhoIsYourDaddy.
Or, this just goes to show that none of us have any idea what the free market is going to decide.
Patent protection has nothing to do with “open”, whatever that means, or open source. There is plenty of open source software that have patent protection.
This is a repeat of the audio codec wars, and actually most of the same players. In the end consumers drive the economics, not the other way around. And thus mp3 is still king, and codec royalties are paid to the patent holders.
You have a choice:
Surf The Real Internet…
or
Surf Steve Jobs’ vision of what the Internet ~Should~ Be.
The idea is absurd on the face of it.
Jeremy
Thanks for the post, but you basically described the status quo, without giving any insight into what technologoes might become standard after the current situation plays out after a few years.
The primary change driver will be the fact that the web is the largest platform, and open to boot. Mobile apps will disappear, because it is inefficient fo developers to write the same app for multiple platforms, and inefficient for users who can only use appas written for their own platform (Nokia users can’t access iPhone apps, and vice versa).
With web apps, developers write once, and they run on all browsers. All users with a browser can access them. Of course this will require web standards. This is why Flash will die.
It won’t die soon, because apart from video, it is required for games and other interactive content. But developing in Flash is expensive in terms of the cost of Adobe proprietary tools. Developing in the web standards (AJAX on steroids) that will one day replace Flash will be cheap, because the tools will be open source.
There will also be the inevitable backlash against the likes of Apple (or their closed, restrictive platform), Adobe (costly development tools) and Microsoft (Silverlight down your throat, incompatible browsers). These will drive adoption of open, universal web standards, which will beenfit both developers and users.
Of course, this won’t happen next week. But if you’re going to describe the future, please do more than just extrapolating the present.
I’m curious, you really think Adobe’s tools are expensive? I mean I could go on for days about all the things I think are wrong with Adobe’s tools, but expensive isn’t one of them. I can buy CS4 Master Suite for barely more than I pay for yearly support maintenance of my 3D software. Now Autodesk’s tools, especially the Discreet line, are some expensive tools, but Adobe is pretty bargain basement. I mean $2,500 up front, and then less than $1,000 for every new version, for a collection of everything Adobe makes, isn’t really breaking the bank. It costs you more to own an iPhone for two years, than it does to own a license of every piece of software Adobe makes.
In my experience Adobe CS pays for itself in one gig.
it’s ogg theora, not ogg vorbis
i already learned a bit from html5 and it is really amazing.
Flash wasn’t even used for video back in the days; it was for rich browsing experience only. Websites started to use Flash to encapsulates video into browsers because the Flash plugin had a better distribution than RealPlayer and other contenders – all about reach like you said.
With HTML5, browsers can now play video file natively. Websites will likely adopt HTML5, like YouTube did, and will serve video files with HTML5.
Flash makes your computer lag, it has a large memory footprint and is grossly inefficient. HTML5 is hands down a better approach.
But who cares about the better technology if HTML5 doesn’t work for 85% of the users yet?
Truth is in 2 years from now, HTML5 market penetration should be much higher and I’m sure most video sites will serve their video files with HTML5. Flash will still exist because people are slow to upgrade their browsers, but it will be more-so marginal.
It might be a disappointment today that Flash isn’t on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, but 2 years from now I don’t think it will matter that much.
Google announced earlier this week that they will no longer support IE6 for Google Apps and soon Gmail and Google Calendar. Why are they doing that? To push their Chrome browser of course!
Why is Steve taking this position on Flash? Because he doesn’t want to see an alternative App Store with Flash apps.
The side effect of their greed is a faster adoption of better technologies which is actually a good news for the future of web application development – and users in the end.
“For several years, the Flash Platform was unique in its ability to create highly interactive browser based applications.”
I don’t want to rub you the wrong way or anything, but that’s false.
Anybody can get an authenticode certificate for about $165 a year from Comodo or another CA and sign an active X control, not just Macromedia.
That was true in 2000 as well. I as a matter of fact was creating active X controls which had Authenticode signed cabs for companies in the US and UK at the time.
The fact that Macromedia made a GUI to compile what was a proprietary format for the Active X control to interpret, and that it was popularized does not make your statement less false.
Flash was and is 1 OCX control amongst tens of thousands.
“First, right now, there is a lack of common approach among browser makers on what format to use for the HTML video object.”
The only major site that tried to create a video DOM object based sharing website is the piratebay so far. Once more start popping up, it will deprecate flash.
Microsoft made Soapbox with Flash, not Silverlight. Even Microsoft is not dumb enough to go against the grain in a losing swim upstream. Once the ogg container starts to be used in preference of other formats due to HTML5 example code and copy/paste snippets, you can kiss the WMV spec goodbye. the FLV spec goodbye, and every other transport.
That’s reality. Not much is going to stop it.
If you wanna cash in on it, you have to make tools that can leverage that, instead of making yet another WHEEL. Nobody wants another scripting engine, another video platform, another OCX object, yet another wheel. No one. The audience is not the ignorant internet users of 1998 which you made millions on.
The only catch right now is streaming. That’s what’s keeping millions of HTML5 DOM video object embed code snippets from popping up on Google.
Flash has RTMP. But the lack of real time ogg video will soon change. I believe patent challenges and IP were blocking that. Not the lack of the ability to implement it.
Didn’t know till recently that Flash can now be indexed and boost SEO by major search engines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWF
“On May 1, 2008, Adobe dropped its licensing restrictions on the SWF format specifications, as part of the Open Screen Project. However, Rob Savoye, a member of the Gnash development team, has pointed to some parts of the Flash format which remain closed. On July 1, 2008, Adobe released code which allowed the Google and Yahoo search-engines to crawl and index SWF files.”
This happened over a year and a half ago. It should have happened 10 years ago.
Search engines were indexing SWFs content previously, but the text had to be embedded into the SWF. Now dynamic content can be indexed, although there could still be some more improvements. However, it seems that Google and Adobe continue to work together since there’s been a number of announcements since July 1, 2008 about how searching SWFs files have gotten better and better.
exactly…until mid-2008 Adobe’s plan was to tax the mobile internet.
Absolutely hillarious…lol
Jeremy — Thank you for the very helpful and balanced post. I like your distinction between “Web Productivity” and “Rich Media” apps.
Would it make sense to add “Web Video” apps as a proper subset of Rich Media Apps per your HTML 5 Video analysis?
That is, could Adobe technically (and legally) use HML 5 as a wrapper to deliver just the video subset of Flash’s capabilities using Flash’s file format and proprietary codecs as an alternative to whatever Apple, Microsoft or Google promote?
That may not be in Adobe’s interest, but for me the question clearly separates the battle among video formats deliverable via HTML 5 from a higher level battle for Rich Media apps.
I would not be surprised to see SVG support in the coming webkit implementation. There is WebGL (OpenGL for web) support in webkit already.
What JQuery/HTML5 left off SVG/WebGL will pickup.
I fail to see a long term future with a proprietary file format being dominant. hell even Adobe tried to develop SVG before they bought Macromedia.
From a user experience, when an entire interface is built on Flash it becomes a burden to use, no matter how fancy it looks: Tab-returns aren’t implemented correctly, mice and touch interfaces don’t respond consistent with the OS controls and every. input. takes. twice. as long. as. it should.
Brightcove is guilty of this (or at least it was up to version 3… I haven’t used 4 yet.) To me, it just seems like a lazy way to get a job done. Fast to program, fast to implement, but super slow in every day use. (And that’s true regardless of processor or platform, in my experience.)
Lastly, when Michael tweeted this out he made it sound like Jeremy had something to do with the creation of Flash. He may have had a hand in its later evolution, but I remember it being created by Futuresplash, which was acquired by Macromedia quite early. I’m pretty sure Macromedia didn’t acquire Allaire until several years later and by that time Macromedia’s Flash was already well on its way. Or is my recollection wrong?
Additionally, I find it funny when folks brandish numbers about what percentage of web video is based on flash. When, in fact, a vast majority of that is from a single site. If Google decides to toss Flash out the window, those stats could invert overnight.
Excellent article. There are other challenges for HTML5 to displace Flash for interactive apps and websites. One is authoring tools which are quite mature in the case of Adobe Flash (eclipse, Flex builder, Flash IDE, etc.). Another issue is that ALL of your source code is freely downloadable from HTML5 sites. Who wants to give all their hard work away for free? At least flash swfs can be encrypted to protect the actionscript classes.
Anyway, HTML5 will make websites better that is for sure, but it cannot “kill” other web technologies. The landscape will always be fragmented.
HTML5 is too young but I think will be the winner,
if the 4 Big players Apple, Google , Microsoft and Mozilla decide to kill Flash. And they have decided to kill it, so it will be just a matter of time.
My prediction is 24 months from now to state the death of Flash.
What they need to do:
1. Agree on the video codec (one for free content, one for protected content)
2. Build very good Authoring tools for developers
3. Give this stuff for Free
I’m sorry for Adobe but that’s it, as Java applets and other runtimes in the past , thereis not space for them in the Browsers and on the Web of the future.
Oh boy, apple fanboy beating his chest like a gorilla parroting the ‘death of flash’ like they are in a cult or something. I’m wagering HTML NEVER catches up to Flash in producing the caliber of RIA’s Flash / Actionscript is producing NOW! 6-7 years before we see anything like prezi.com.
HTML5, HTML6, HTML7 (etc) won’t kill flash! do you know how slow of a process it’s going to be. You think the iPad is a game changer! LOL! Small Potatoes, out here in the real world we use PC’s where we can download and interact with the REAL INTERNET! Not just download via the app store with our big iPod Touch eReader! That is just BORING.
Take it easy…
..we don’t want to loose you for an heart attack, as we will loose Flash.
It’s not because of Apple, it is because of the alignment of the interests of the other bigger players too.
Jeremy “the Flash Guy” state this clearly in is article, even him is uncertain about Flash in the long term.
Think about this theory (Conspiracy) :
Apple, Google and Microsoft are fighting, but no one of them can win against the others, they are too big. So what they can do ?
Kill Flash (Adobe), to discharge this aggressivity and find a common ground to dominate the web in the future 10 years…
Apple has the knowledge of Video codecs and user experience, Google is the master of the Web and Free stuff, Microsoft is the king of nasty tactics… put them together on a common interest and the game is over for Flash.
It’s not a technical issue as Jeremy explains very well is a political battle.
if you’re speaking of video streaming only, it will take A LOT longer than 24 months. Don’t want to hear any arguments, just if it happens, get back with me in 24 months.
if you’re talking about the Flash Platform as a whole, then you need therapy my friend. Too many Fortune 500 companies are dumping millions into developing the next gen Rich Internet App / Data Tools ( http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/10/nyregion/20100110-netflix-map.html ) for flash to be going anywhere anytime. I don’t want to hear any arguments against that fact either.
Oh, yeah regarding the political battle, you are absolutely correct on that point. However, I think you will find that Steve Jobs has overplayed his hand on the iPad. Won’t put a dent in the netbook/tablet market unless it gets Flash/Multitasking. Anyone can speculate all they want, Tme will tell.
wish we could edit our comments, on the political battle btw, your theory of Google, Apple and Microsoft Ganging up on Adobe (Flash) is hilarious. How old are you btw?
In case you haven’t heard the ‘battle’ is between Apple and Google since Goog entered the Smartphone Market with Android going head to head with the iPhone, and Eric Schmidt was quickly fired from Apple’s board.
I like your version better though. LOL. Reminds me of : http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/285267
Clearly we disagree:
I don’t see a future for Flash, point. Time will tell.
24 months seems short but today is a long time and enough to create a new global trend that will inexorably bring to the end of Flash, sure it will take more years to see Flash definitely fade and disappear, maybe 6-8 years.
You are overestimating the value of Flash for the Enterprise, from an Application stand-point it’s just a front-end technology, you can do most of that stuff with Javascript and SVG (but it needs more efforts, today)
We need Flash today, yes because the alternatives are fragmented.
There is a lack of good Development and Authoring tools for HTML5/Javascript/SVG.
Flash is stronger there, but what if that changes ?
How many developers/Companies will stick to a pricey, slow and closed technology ?
Why Silverlight is failing, nobody want a new runtime , a new language, a new closed environment on the Web.
Flash RIAs ? The hype is already gone 3 years ago, wake up.
Where is Adobe AIR in the market ?Zip.
Is 2010 we live in the world of Ruby, Ajax , Webkit, iPhone, Android and Chrome today.
I understand that for a Flash developer like you this is shocking news.
The Conspiracy theory is funny, right, but once again time will tell…
Personally I would prefer Apple , Google and Adobe to be Partners and cooperate, to give us the best experience ever.
But that is ridiculous…sadly.
3 years after apple introduces Core Animation, Adobe finally decides to adopt it in the next version of Flash.
After 8 years of Mac OS X, Adobe’s core products like photoshop’s still using Carbon.
You really can’t blame Apple for being angry at Adobe.
@Ben, Apple have owned Final Cut Pro for 9 years and that’s still Carbon!