'Adobe is lazy' says Steve Jobs

[Ray Beez]

Great post Dandylion.

[MikeMD]

The huge adoption rate of the Flash player is thanks to video, mostly due to YouTube

Flash was at 95% adoption rate before youtube or even google itself existed. It has absolutely nothing to do with video or youtube. It's the other way around. You tube used flash because flash already had 95% adoption rate and that was the only way to ensure everybody could watch it. What were their alternatives? quicktime ( a buggy malware that tries to take over your machine and works on less than 50% of machines ) or an equally crappy windows media.

Youtube owes its life to flash. Doesn't anybody here remember dealing with quicktime and windows media before flash entered the video market? It was crap in every sense of the word.

[dandylion13]

Flash was at 95% adoption rate before youtube or even google itself existed.

Yes, I did mention that. It's rather important

[tonypa]

If Flash can run on Android, Palm, Symbian or Windows Mobile why would it not run on iPhone? Doesn't matter if its slow or crashes, its up to end user to decide if its worth installing and running.

[tidenburg]

This thread has convinced me that, apart from aps, the pad doesn't really need flash. Only web animations (most of which offer alternatives) are pointless and the only stuff you need it for is games - of which only a few will be built with it in mind.

No point really, publishing flash => aps will be enough.

[mr_malee]

I dislike both companies and I hope this destroys them both.



^Bill Gates.

[flashisland]

Doesn't matter if its slow or crashes, its up to end user to decide if its worth installing and running.

I think that's why it bugs us developers so much. iPhone/iPad users don't even have the option to install Flash. Ok so maybe Flash shouldn't come pre-installed, but at least give users the option to install it if they choose to. I understand having a closed system on the iPhone, but I feel like the iPad should ideally function as a mini computer and not an oversized iPhone. So many people are looking at the Apple vs. Adobe aspect of this when maybe we should be debating the pros/cons of having such a closed computer system.

[tomsamson]

Yeah, good point. Tonypa, your view is right of course for an open system where one can install everything, even if some things don´t run well at all.
What apple is selling there as device though is the exact opposite: a device one has to worry much less about because it runs those things it is expected to run without own fiddling around and in return one also can´t fiddle around as much on many ends like on a regular desktop/notebook.
Its really a device type for people who want a device they don´t worry about and just use for what it can be used for.
So a plugin that runs or doesn´t run well and one has the manual option to turn it on or off doesn´t fit into that concept.

Personally i´d be quite sad of course if now all pcs/notebooks would turn into a closed system like that, but i don´t see it happening as long as people still also buy such open systems next to the closed ones (which a lot will at least do for work).
I like it though that there is also a closed system option like this as additional option.
I like the idea to have my desktop mac and pc for work, my iPhone for on the go and the iPad for on the couch relaxed mode usage and for that, yeah, i think as such additional device its cool.

[flashisland]

I agree that the closed system does have its place, especially for older or inexperienced users that just want a computer system to work doing basic stuff. I've always thought that both Windows and even Macs were too complicated for many users and that there should be something more restricting and easier to operate. I believe the iPad could be that solution, with or without Flash. There will always be a place for open systems though, as I can't imagine many computer users giving up total control over what can and can't be installed on a device.

[tomsamson]

on another note:
I was thrown out of the CS5 beta today, my constant change and addition requests were seen as "disruptive".
I can´t go into the details for NDA reasons but i´m sad its seen like that when someone complains because he hopes for improvements.

[flashisland]

on another note:
I was thrown out of the CS5 beta today, my constant change and addition requests were seen as "disruptive".

That's disappointing to hear. I was really hoping that the CS5 would finally be a more stable release than CS4, which has always been really buggy on my machine. Adobe really needs to step it up and get their game together if they want to survive, and listening to developers to actually use their product every day couldn't hurt.

(Aside: Any word on if they'll actually be including a memory profiler like Flex has in this release? I love the memory profiler but I'm not about to pay $700 for it.)

[tomsamson]

^^ Yes.
^I can only talk about what is already public knowledge.

[Incrue]

So whats the point of having beta testers at all?Just to listen what they already want to listen?

[rumblesushi]

I love Flash, but one thing that has puzzled me for a long time is the lack of GPU support. I just don't get it.

They even added directX/OpenGL support for Shockwave/Director ages ago, why not Flash?

It makes no sense. And with Unity gaining momentum, with it's incredible hardware accelerated 3D performance, you'd think hardware acceleration would be Adobe's main priority.

Just imagine how much more would be possible with Flash if the GPU did all the rendering as it should. Not only would the graphics capabilities go through the roof, but the CPU would be left with much, much more juice to take care of AI/physics/logic/any other computation.

[dandylion13]

Hey Rumblesushi, that's another big debate and there are a couple of threads here on that.

It comes down to this: Adobe (and Macromedia before them) wants to make the Flash player as reliable as possible so they're extremely conservative about hardware access. Limited hardware access, and therefor less crashing, was a big, big reason that Flash survived and flourished over the much more powerful Shockwave. As soon as a web-player gets a reputation for crashing the browser or OS (which Shockwave did), users turn away and developers with them. History has shown that performance is a distant second to reliability, from the point of view of end-users. This is playing out now as well: Nexus One phones are crashing due to multitasking. Techies like us love multitasking, but ordinary users just want to make reliable phone calls. When you push the technology too far, there's a risk of it breaking in unexpected ways.

TonyPa: Yes, you're right! But, the other side of the coin is Adobe/Apple politics, which is really complex and goes back years. Adobe claims Apple doesn't give them the low level API access they need to make the player run well on their OS's.. Apple has other complaints about Adobe.. we have no way of knowing the details, so it just becomes a he-said-she-said situation and everyone looses.

I agree with others, I think the iPad/iPhone, and various things like the Boxxee Box are basically appliances. Like refrigerators. They're consumer computers. Stress-free, crash proof devices that a 3 year-old can operate. It makes sense that they're locked down and tamper-proof.

[newblack]

Not much to add that hasn't been said. I simply don't have that warm spot in my heart for Flash like I used to. I'm long since impressed with the creation software, the compiler sucks and the runtime is pathetic. I'm not awaiting something good anymore, some (completely feasible and yet nonexistent) performance boost, hardware acceleration, proper gpu support, I just don't care. I, and most of the developers I know in a similar situation to me, are bailing on Flash fast and for good.

[rumblesushi]

newblack - if you want to create online games, what better option is there than Flash?

[AluminX]

If Flash can run on Android, Palm, Symbian or Windows Mobile why would it not run on iPhone? Doesn't matter if its slow or crashes, its up to end user to decide if its worth installing and running.

That is a fantastic point! I'm speechless since i strongly agree that Adobe needs to get their act together and get flash to a point where it cannot be compared with open standards.

[frogboy4]

I'm an artist and a PC convert due to not being able to afford continuing buying-binges to maintain an Apple that functions as well as my PC. Thank god I know so many IT people or that wouldn’t be the case!

Apple's lack of Flash and internal Blu-Ray support is due to Apple Inc.'s business model. They want you purchasing from them. Steve Jobs doesn't want you watching free Hulu or viewing a beautiful Blu-Ray movie instead of purchasing media from itunes. Even if Apple could get Flash up and running on their systems, they probably wouldn't. Jobs will have his customers "Flintstoning" it until he devises a way to take over Flash’s market share of media content. This is not about proprietary technology or some sort of customer generosity. Steve Jobs knows somebody's going to be fleecing consumers for media content and he wants that company to be Apple. It's business. I get it. I just won’t buy into it.

But yeah, Adobe needs to get off its butt and do something about it. No company is entitled to be lazy in this competitive frontier. Flash, when done well, can be slick and beautiful. It’s a shame it can’t be seen like that on the most attractive computers on the market.

[Ray Beez]

He's thrown out because at this point its no longer about what features should CS5 have, it's about finding/fixing bugs so they can ship a working product.