Fluff article, really despise these immature "wars" and biased blogs. I own an Android phone, iPad, Touchpad, and a Windows laptop. I use the best technology I can and let results decide my decisions rather than brand loyalty.
The new Media Server is for video content only - your iOS device will still be missing Flash content. Competent websites have already solved this problem. I'm all for HTML5 taking over as long as browser compatibility is maintained and developer tools improve for both designers and developers. For now, Flash wins in the performance, cross-browser compatibility, and developer tools.
People seems to forget that Adobe is a company that makes tools. For Adobe, it has never been Flash versus HTML5. It's about giving tools that people are willing to buy or upgrade to. Even if the iPhone had never existed, Adobe would still be adding HTML5 and mobile support for their products.
Indeed. Adobe is already making some html5 tools, as well as allowing cross compilation of fla files to swf and html5. They actually want flash to die too, since the patent licensing of SWF is quite expensive, complicated, and restrictive.
Adobe has actually been saying this, too, but no one is listening.
I think it was Adobe that forgot it was a company that makes tools. They did make it Flash versus HTML5, and are now realizing that they should have been agnostic as a toolmaker.
I work for an agency that has the chance to invite different teams from adobe into our office every 6 months or so. Many people might not realize this but when they come to your office they are looking to hear what you have to say, they are not there to push an agenda of how they envision the future.
They have a whole process of looking over your latest work and hearing about where it went good and where it went bad. They discuss new features that may or may not be of interest to you, and then finish of by asking where you would personally choose to invest in adobe if you had the opportunity. They actually want to know if given the opportunity to be their bosses, what would you direct them to work on.
This is why this article strikes me so odd, because Adobe didn't lose anything, they asked their partners what they could build for them, and clearly video streaming to ios was a top feature request.
It's not "giving tools that people are willing to buy", it's "selling tools that are profitable". iPhone or not, if there wasn't a business reason to support HTML5, I'm positive Adobe would've been perfectly content being the proprietary standard for digital media.
I find this a little ironic as today Apple also chose to highlight a Flash app as its iPad Game of The Week: http://yfrog.com/nxvz8p
Machinarium is a popular flash game that runs on iPad through Adobe AIR for mobile. My guess is we'll see a lot more native Flash games on the app store as processor speed increases, and even more impressive work when Flash 11 ships its Stage3D GPU acceleration for mobile (part of the Molehill project).
> Basically, Adobe is acknowledging Apple has won when it comes to Flash.
Why does this article have to have a "vs." narrative? Is it possible that Adobe just wants to succeed and will do what it takes to gain profits?
And I'm not so sure Apple has won just yet. If a device were to gain the traction necessary to gain enough marketshare (you saw a bit of this with HP's TouchPad), we support Flash is a pretty decent incentive for the average consumer who isn't caught up in the HTML5 vs. Flash war (read: every average person).
Well considering the rhetoric from Apple & Adobe regarding iOS and flash, it's definitely been an "us vs them" scenario. Adobe were very quick to publicly criticise Apple for not supporting Flash in iOS, and Apple were very quick to respond with equally stern comments. So I think the author is correct to frame it in those terms.
As for the article, I think it's very balanced. Yes, this is a "win" for Apple, because Adobe have adapted to iOS, not the other way around, and Adobe have been very clear on this issue. They wanted iOS to support flash.
But the article also goes on to say that this is a big step forward for Adobe. Which it is, and that's a positive comment for Adobe.
And finally,
"we support Flash is a pretty decent incentive for the average consumer who isn't caught up in the HTML5 vs. Flash war"
If Flash was as strong as an incentive as you claim it is than iPad sales should have leveled off once Android tablets came to be. we support Flash hasn't turned out to be as big as an incentive as Android tablet makers had hoped. As far as I'm concerned most people are waiting for the >200 android tablet, Flash or no Flash.
For the time being it's an iPad market and Adobe has to pivot around that. I believe in the beginning Apple wasn't against the idea of Flash, but Adobe couldn't deliver (they didn't deliver anything until almost 3 years later) and by the time they did deliver something Apple realized they could do without.
From an ActionScript developer's point of view it still takes too long to develop anything interactive in html5. So for the sake of time cost/income, I'll continue to push interactive content out in flash, while using html5 for linear stuff.
With the recent news of unity for flash, the whole thing is about to embark on a new adventure.
This article is written very childishly and is completely devoid of anything non opinion. This person is obviously neither a market strategist, nor a competent reporter.
Before the iPhone it seemed like everyone agreed that Flash sucked, but after iOS that was taken to be some kind of Apple fanboy position. Which is to say, plenty of people with no particular allegiance to Apple have been unhappy with Flash for a long time, so there is no need to paint this as some kind of unilateral war on Apple's part. Flash is crappy and it's finally, slowly dying, that's all.
Mac users and Linux users agreed that Flash sucked. Windows users just saw it as the thing that let them play games and videos in the browser without downloading some stupid plugin for every different site.
I actually think Flash is not entirely bad, it just does not really belong in browsers. As self-contained apps, Flash applications are pretty cool - they are fun and easy to program (at least AS3 - AS2 sucks), and I often use it as tool for rapid-prototyping little algorithms. Trying to put Flash into browsers though is like putting a sandbox inside another sandbox - it just gets in the way and impossible to effectively interface the two.
Unlike most people who grumbled about Flash, Apple actually made the strategic decision not to support it any more on its mobile OS. I'm not a huge fan of Apple, but I admire and respect them for taking this calculated risk.
> Flash is crappy and it's finally, slowly dying, that's all.
Is it, though?
Google bundles Flash on Android. Android device makers use the existence of Flash as a differentiating factor from iOS devices. And this is not just something disconnected from what users want, if you look at Firefox Mobile's input system,
then one of the top complaints is that Firefox Mobile doesn't support Flash.
I wish this wasn't the case, but it isn't clear at all that Flash is dying. Google bundling it in Android (and Chrome) is helping it quite a bit. If Google had taken a hard stance against it on Android, like Apple did, that would have been great. A lost opportunity.
I've been racking my brain to try and make sense of why som many people seem to have forgotten just what Flash did to the web, and that's it. Pro-Flash is the polite face of Anti-Apple.
This "everyone" that criticized Flash pre-iPhone were web developers on message boards. Now lay people who are just Apple fanboys are partaking in this silly fight. I absolutely do not remember the level of hatred that exists today (again, as far as I can tell, mostly on Apple-leaning websites) pre-iPhone. But maybe we just have different viewpoints on the history.
It's been more than a year after Jobs' post disparaging Flash and promising that HTML5 can fill much of the gap.
While it has improved, HTML5 on iOS still lags behind a lot. Apple wins the Flash fight when Angry Birds can run on HTML5. Maybe that is what they're afraid of.
Why is that necessary? Angry Birds works just fine as an iOS app.
For Flash to become obsolete feature parity of HTML5 is not necessary. If most use cases are covered and if the number of devices without Flash provide enough incentive for content producers and publishers to do without Flash it’s very possible that Flash will disappear slowly.
[+] [-] watty|14 years ago|reply
The new Media Server is for video content only - your iOS device will still be missing Flash content. Competent websites have already solved this problem. I'm all for HTML5 taking over as long as browser compatibility is maintained and developer tools improve for both designers and developers. For now, Flash wins in the performance, cross-browser compatibility, and developer tools.
http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/
[+] [-] jinushaun|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] windsurfer|14 years ago|reply
Adobe has actually been saying this, too, but no one is listening.
[+] [-] grahamr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanalltogether|14 years ago|reply
I work for an agency that has the chance to invite different teams from adobe into our office every 6 months or so. Many people might not realize this but when they come to your office they are looking to hear what you have to say, they are not there to push an agenda of how they envision the future.
They have a whole process of looking over your latest work and hearing about where it went good and where it went bad. They discuss new features that may or may not be of interest to you, and then finish of by asking where you would personally choose to invest in adobe if you had the opportunity. They actually want to know if given the opportunity to be their bosses, what would you direct them to work on.
This is why this article strikes me so odd, because Adobe didn't lose anything, they asked their partners what they could build for them, and clearly video streaming to ios was a top feature request.
[+] [-] foulmouthboy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] doomlaser|14 years ago|reply
Machinarium is a popular flash game that runs on iPad through Adobe AIR for mobile. My guess is we'll see a lot more native Flash games on the app store as processor speed increases, and even more impressive work when Flash 11 ships its Stage3D GPU acceleration for mobile (part of the Molehill project).
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tomlin|14 years ago|reply
Why does this article have to have a "vs." narrative? Is it possible that Adobe just wants to succeed and will do what it takes to gain profits?
And I'm not so sure Apple has won just yet. If a device were to gain the traction necessary to gain enough marketshare (you saw a bit of this with HP's TouchPad), we support Flash is a pretty decent incentive for the average consumer who isn't caught up in the HTML5 vs. Flash war (read: every average person).
[+] [-] tomelders|14 years ago|reply
As for the article, I think it's very balanced. Yes, this is a "win" for Apple, because Adobe have adapted to iOS, not the other way around, and Adobe have been very clear on this issue. They wanted iOS to support flash.
But the article also goes on to say that this is a big step forward for Adobe. Which it is, and that's a positive comment for Adobe.
And finally,
"we support Flash is a pretty decent incentive for the average consumer who isn't caught up in the HTML5 vs. Flash war"
Wh.... wh..... what?
[+] [-] yardie|14 years ago|reply
For the time being it's an iPad market and Adobe has to pivot around that. I believe in the beginning Apple wasn't against the idea of Flash, but Adobe couldn't deliver (they didn't deliver anything until almost 3 years later) and by the time they did deliver something Apple realized they could do without.
[+] [-] wmeredith|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Causalien|14 years ago|reply
With the recent news of unity for flash, the whole thing is about to embark on a new adventure.
[+] [-] 0x12|14 years ago|reply
If Apple had sold a few hundred thousand of these then this would have never happened.
[+] [-] kentbuckle|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] too_many_gregs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] funkah|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smackfu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gavanwoolery|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RyanMcGreal|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azakai|14 years ago|reply
Is it, though?
Google bundles Flash on Android. Android device makers use the existence of Flash as a differentiating factor from iOS devices. And this is not just something disconnected from what users want, if you look at Firefox Mobile's input system,
https://input.mozilla.com/en-US/?product=mobile&sentimen...
then one of the top complaints is that Firefox Mobile doesn't support Flash.
I wish this wasn't the case, but it isn't clear at all that Flash is dying. Google bundling it in Android (and Chrome) is helping it quite a bit. If Google had taken a hard stance against it on Android, like Apple did, that would have been great. A lost opportunity.
[+] [-] tomelders|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MatthewPhillips|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonch|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] recoiledsnake|14 years ago|reply
While it has improved, HTML5 on iOS still lags behind a lot. Apple wins the Flash fight when Angry Birds can run on HTML5. Maybe that is what they're afraid of.
[+] [-] doomlaser|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ugh|14 years ago|reply
For Flash to become obsolete feature parity of HTML5 is not necessary. If most use cases are covered and if the number of devices without Flash provide enough incentive for content producers and publishers to do without Flash it’s very possible that Flash will disappear slowly.
[+] [-] Anechoic|14 years ago|reply
Who is "they" in this statement?