The Adobe’s Flash drones are crying blue murder, the iPad doesn’t do Flash! Apple’s PR material on it’s website isn’t helping out either. If it’s broken don’t pretend it isn’t! Remember people we are dealing with companies here (Apple and Adobe) both of them have their own corporate agenda.
The big question is actually far more important: it’s not a question of using proprietary Adobe Flash or web standards it’s about accessibility of the content. Flash can be nice for enrichment but the same can be accomplished using HTML5/CSS/JavaScript. So poor lazy web developers rule our online experience and only bet on Flash because “everybody” (98%) has Flash installed. But what if you don’t or can’t view the content? Is there an alternative available? Often there isn’t (please download the Flash plugin)! Big companies like Google’s YouTube and Vimeo already have made their content available through HTML5.
It’s commonly known that Flash uses a lot of memory and CPU cycles, two things you definitely don’t want on a portable (or any device for that matter) add the instability of the Flash plugin which cause 99% of the crashes of the web browsers and you have the perfect answer of not using this technology. Adobe has to fix this first before it’s usable on any device.
Like Arnold Schwarzenegger so elegantly puts it: To be or not to be? …Not to be!
Update: Apple has asked their advertising agency Chiat/Day Media Arts Lab to remove the misleading material from the promo movie.Update: Kevin Lynch, CTO of Adobe reacts on the Adobe blog regarding the Flash Player issues. Read his comments here.
February
2010
– start (very) long rant here — >:-o
Seriously; I absolutely and passionately hate flash on my Mac.
I can not ever use it in any of the browsers I have installed on my Mac (Chrome, Safari, FireFox) without it hogging my CPU, slowing down my MacBook Pro like crazy and turning my fans into a hair-blowers!
Now, when I look at the same flash content on my Quad Core PC: not even 10% cpu use! WTF!
And even on my Windows Mobile 6.1 phone with the Skyfire browser on it (yeah it supports flash): no problems! It does not “kill”my experience there either!
But on a Mac? Hell no!
So yeah, I can see why Jobs isn’t a fan of Flash (Adobe).
But come on: if you really dislike proprietary formats – well Apple is the king of “proprietary”. Heck, Apple doesn’t even want you to be able to change a battery on you iPhone or you new MacBook Pro. They want to have absolute control over your “experience” of their product.
But back to reality.
Everyone that has ever been involved in developing a website, knows that although HTML is portrayed as a “standard”, in reality every single browser out there just has their own quirks when working with HTML.
What works without any problems in one browser produces unexpected results in another.
Let alone when you combine it with javascript and other options.
And, to add to the equation: developers working on HTML5 video “standards” seem not to agree on what the “standard” should be.
So, do I see HTML 5 replacing Flash? Not in the short term, I don’t. I see it as an alternative that hopefully will grow over time.
Now, regarding your opinion:
It’s not so much the developers. It’s the companies that PAY the developers!
If you give companies that want a website developed a choice between using flash or spending circa twice the money (because the effort to make it all work is twice as big!), they will always choose for the cheaper option! And they are right in doing so!
But here’s another perspective on the whole Flash/Apple issue:
The only reason why this discussion has become relevant, is because there are way more iPhone users now then there are Mac users.
And those iPhone users are used to being able to view rich – video – content on their PC (yes: PC not Mac).
And the only thing they notice is that their precious iPhone that offers them an (almost) perfect browsing experience, lacks support for some sites that they like a lot (i.e. use flash).
Here’s an interesting fact supporting the above:
According to San Francisco Chronicles’ The Tech Chronicles:
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?&entry_id=56724)
And don’t tell me flash can’t work well on an iPhone: if it can work well on my 520 MHz PXA270 XScale processor (designed in 2004), it should work on an iPhone (and – if I am not mistaking – people have produced iPhone flash hacks already).
But you know what: bottom-line is: I don’t really care who “wins” or not.
I just want my experience to be smooth and enjoyable!
And guess what: so do 99,9% from the end-users that don’t know jack about HTML5 or flash!
If I can get that experience with Flash, so be it. If HTML5 is going to do the trick; great!
In the mean time I just avoid flash (like the plague) on my Mac.
– end (long) rant here –
February
2010
Dude, Windows Mobile? are we talking about user experience? Common Windows Mobile is the worst mobile user experience available in the current mobile industry.
On the experience part/battery replacement, I know you don’t like the control but Apple has a customer satisfaction rate of 86% (highest in the industry), so there are a lot of people out there who don’t share your opinion or don’t care.
I don’t think you have worked for a company with extensive Flash experience?
Actually I am working for a company who develops 100% in Flash and yes it is the developer who is lazy and deploy crappy code. After all if I don’t review during Art Direction and my colleague doesn’t review on interaction we get crap products. In my experience I’ve rarely worked with a developer who impresses me with an eye for detail or quality.
And no it’s not twice the effort developing the same stuff in HTML/JavaScript/CSS if you don’t add Internet Explorer in the equation. When IE start counting add 33% to your budget.
The issue isn’t more relevant because there are way more iPhone users now it’s because Flash sucks! Its content isn’t accessible, it’s bad for SEO and last but not least it’s unstable and adds more security issues to any browser.
In September 2008 Matthew Dempsky reported a bug (one of the many) that would crash the browser to Adobe. This bug isn’t fixed even after 16 months. If you’re up to it you can try it out here. Careful this will crash your Firefox, on Safari and Chrome this will crash your Flash-browser plugin.
7 million download attempts? Because those same lazy developers push to download and don’t offer an alternative.
It’s not about NOT working on an iPhone it’s about potentially crashing your mobile device! And Flash is really good at it! But you don’t know jack about an iPhone because you own a Billy Boy (Windows Mobile) device and Flash runs OKAY on Windows NOT on Mac OS X and guess what the iPhone OS is OS X!
Just check out the Adobe forums and do some research first, developers are asking Adobe to fix it’s shit!
By the way next time rant about it you’re the Editor in Chief so you have the ability to post about your experience on Windows Mobile
February
2010
When is the last time you guys developed something and the customer said: Nah, we don’t need it to be IE compatible?
Heck, even Apple’s website is IE compatible (to help sell all those iPhone and iPods to Windows users).
Anyway: even though Flash might be “broken” it still works “enough” for most end-users (except if you’re unlucky to have a Mac cause then it sucks).
As a consumer I’m not interested in the technical challenges developers have. Who cares! I (and they) look at the end-result.
Look at this website for instance: http://www.nalden.net/
It’s a blog made in Flash. Lot’s of cool features. And, it doesn’t crash despite claims that “flash sucks”.
Making that in HTML5; nice idea but why spend all the money if I can do it cheaper?
I would seriously consider spending more time and using a new technology on something if the end result is overwhelmingly better or if it makes things possible that can’t be done otherwise.
After all, I can can only spend my Euro once…
Oh, regarding the Flash bug page: guess what.
Chrome never crashed. Just the plugin. And it politely notified me about that.
Safari, on the other hand, immediately crapped out.
Guess that is due to lazy programmers deploying crappy code, not caring about making their browser more “plug-in crash proof” like Chrome…
Did I hear a faint echo about something like “user-experience” and “customer satisfaction”?
February
2010
Maybe you didn’t notice but I am a Mac user so I report about my experiences on the Mac not on a PC I don’t give a flying f*** about that platform. I develop using web standards and if it works in IE nice if it doesn’t I don’t give a rat’s a**.
As you’ve probably read my comment the company I work for (Qi) develops 100% in Flash so the only issues we have are plugin and not browser related. Most issues like performance are resolved in ActionScript.
Nalden, is a nice website but it’s also a resource hog (68% CPU) due to Flash.
Safari didn’t crash due lazy programming and crappy code, if you even had taken the time to read about the new features you would’ve noticed that crash protection is a Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) ONLY feature. So Safari 4.0.4 will crash on Mac OS X 10.5, Windows XP/Vista/7.