There is a debate going on at the moment about Flash. This is a debate that has only really started heating up since Apple announced the iPad and stated that neither it nor the iPhone (and iPod Touch) would be running Flash any time soon.
Adobe countered this very public dismissal of their software by saying that Apple would be denying users of the iPhone/iPad the ability to view ‘most of’ the internet.
I can understand why Adobe would be put out by Apple’s refusal to support their technology, on the back of which they sell their own products, and I can also understand why Apple does not want to support Flash on the iPhone OS (for want of a better name – what else should we call it, MacOS Mobile?).
There are a few things to note about this disagreement:
- Apple has publicly stated that Flash is the only commonly-used (de facto) standard on the web that is entirely proprietary. Flash binaries can only be played by software written by Adobe.
- Adobe has produced a Flash plugin that runs on Apple’s desktop OS for many years. Its performance has always been sluggish when compared to its Windows counterpart.
- Everyone is focusing on the Video aspect of Flash, with hardly a mention of the Flash games that are the mainstay of Facebook and its ilk, and the moving (and sometimes LOUD) ads that are the bane of any user of the internet.
- Whichever aspect of Flash we talk about, it has to be mentioned that the Flash plugin on MacOS crashes. A lot. According to sources within Apple, it is the number one cause of software crashes reported by users.
- The Flash plugin on MacOS is a resource hog. It uses a LOT of CPU, even when just showing static images.
Put all these facts together, and you come up with a ’standard’ that Apple’s users can only use with a plugin that is written by Adobe, and is buggy and slow. And Adobe has had a long time to fix it.
Adobe’s take on this is that Apple has not given them access to low-level APIs that would allow them to make video faster.
That’s it?
Adobe release a slow, buggy resource-hog of a plugin whose purpose is to play Flash files and Flash video, and say that the reason that it’s so slow is that Apple don’t allow them access to private APIs that would make video faster.
I don’t buy it.
If we were just talking about video playback (for which alternatives are starting to emerge – HTML5’s video tag is now supported by several browsers, on MacOS and Windows, although it’s not yet quite ready), then I would concede that it could have an effect on the performance.
But they are completely sidestepping the issue of the plugin’s tendency to crash and its propensity for CPU-munching. Battery life on a MacBook Pro can be as much as halved, just by reading a web page that has a single Flash ad at the top. Open the page, and fans come on. It’s not pretty.
Steve Jobs calls Adobe ‘lazy’ for their attitude towards Flash on MacOS, and since it has existed for so long you would have to agree with him. Although to be fair to Adobe, they only bought the technology a few years ago.
A few years. And it’s still a buggy resource hog.
Yeah, lazy could be a fair assessment.
Popularity: 80% [?]
Apple refuse Adobe access to low level APIs in the same way that Adobe refuse open source developers access to their IP but for very different reasons.
For Adobe it’s a case of losing control of a large part of what it sells.
For Apple it’s down to Apples refusal to condone any proprietory standard that isn’t pwnt by Apple. So, erm, a fear of losing control of a large part of what it sells.
Ok, so not so different reasons.
But back to topic.
For years I have been rabid on the subject of flash and it’s use on the web. Any website that requires flash for navigation should just get off the Internet; the intranet is your natural home. Go somewhere that you’re allowed to say who has what installed on their machine.
The problem now lies with BBC iPlayer. That uses flash video and the desktop client needs flash and air. I spent a fair chunk of Saturday trying to get the bitch working on my Linux machine. It still doesn’t, although I am proud to say flash is working in the browser.
I like Internet games. I am a farmville adict.
Flash is NOT java though, and should not pretend to be.
Much in the same way that Facebook seems to be trying to be Twitter, Flash should not try to be Java.
Adobe is saying that Flash is everywhere, and this is why people should support it – I disagree. I say people should be using the technology that is appropriate for the job in hand. Writing webgames in Flash to me seems silly – but then I am a Mac user, and Flash on the Mac sucks *hard*.
Similarly, playing video in Flash is a silly idea when there are standard ways of doing it. And yes, I know the current ’standard way’ is so recent that it currently works on Safari 4.0.4 and Chrome 4, but it is starting to get there – and people are starting to write to the standard.
Except for Firefox. Theora, eh? I think not. (And as a footnote, when I first heard of OGG Theora, I thought to myself “Theora? Is that a real name then? I assumed it was made up for the Max Headroom movie”, only to find out they named it after Theora Jones in said movie).
I have been saying for *years* that people who write entire websites in Flash should be shot. Or at least hurt quite badly. I also despise Flash ads, that distract and annoy while you are trying to read websites.
Take away those four things (video, webgames, websites and ads), and you have to ask yourself the question: “Flash, huh! What is it good for?”
So far I have only come up with the answer “absolutely nothing!”
@Scott Actually, now that it is no longer required for video, Flash’s only legitimate use is web-games, even on the Mac. Just look on newgrounds .com for some good examples. Mind you since anyone can upload their games, 99% of uploads are crap. Of course the voting system means that the worst stuff mostly get’s deleted before to long.
Javascript only recently became useful for action intensive games and in some situations using canvas and WebGL for games is worse than just doing the graphics as CSS divs. For instance Jangaron: http://www.jangaron.net/jangaron0.6/jangaron.html would be a lot slower and more power hungry if it used Canvas or WebGL for rendering.
Also, it’s a lot easier to write real-time Flash games out of the box. Until we start seeing easy to use and efficient of the shelf Javascript games libraries most people will be forced to make their web-games in Flash.
However since Javascript is still being optimized and WebGL is still a draft I doubt it will take too long before Javascript becomes a viable option even for physics intensive vector graphic action games. I just hope newgrounds will start excepting Javascript games.
RT @scottearle: So what about Flash? http://bit.ly/aEzIYW