macbook, Mac OS X (10.6.6), Ipad owner
That's actually a really good question. In all honesty that's the way it came across to me, but that's just from my perspective. I've been developing in the Flash platform (as well as with the open standards) for years now and I recall that as Android was coming out the Adobe team was really doing great things and was really excited about Flash on mobile devices. I recall that when Jobs really took on Flash in that letter and said it was a technology of the past and etc. that was a really influential thing.
So I never really have had any issues with performance or crashes or anything like that on my device, but you're right I don't have any clue why Adobe just dropped it like this. Especially since they just released the version 11 for android. It's really pretty sad and frustrating for me since here I am defending it and wanting Apple to consider allowing it on my iPad and this happens. Crap!
Steve was right all along. Additionally, the incredible acceptance and uptake of all the iOS based devices sure as heck played a role in this. Adobe is a business and not having a Flash player for these millions of devices was hurting them financially. So they made the only wise business decision they could and that was to accept the fact that every single word of Steve's Thoughts on Flash were on the mark.
With Adobe embracing HTML5 (an open standard vs. Flash-a proprietary technology), they've acknowledged this.
Now can we just move on?
I think that nails it right on the head. Either Steve had to be right or he had to be wrong. When you look at his letter in hind sight he was taking an incredibly distrinct negative stance on Flash; no doubt about it. Because he went so black and white on it, I think most Apple folks went along with him regardless. Being on the ground floor I think I and other Flash developers saw the obvious problems with his letter and really watched Adobe have trouble defending it's platform against the attacks. I found this interesting article with dozones of responses to Jobs being supposed "right about everything":
The point though is that I'm starting to wonder if maybe Adobe just wasn't really able to handle the negativity of it all specifically with the popularity of Apple's iPad and iPhone sales and all of that. I know that for me, the lack of iPad support has been a sole sticking point when talking about Flash with non-technical people. Not for technical reasons but purely because it just isn't available.
I'm very curious to see what happens as this begins to unfold in real terms over the next few months.
"...maybe Adobe just wasn't really able to handle the negativity of it al..."
The more obvious (and accurate) anylysis would be that Adobe was not really able to make Flash work adequately on mobile devices. Not that it's that much better on Macs (I have it disabled, as do many other Mac users).
You keep repeating your arguments, observations and paranoid theories over and over, as if the will make them true. Your time would be better spent brushing up on HTLM 5 and other truly open standards.
PS: from today's reports, it looks like MS is also giving up Silverlight and embracing HTLM, as well.
Flash is dead, long live the efficient, battery saving, light king that is HTML5.
And yes, it's official by Adobe that Flash is no longer supported on ANY mobile device.
Something really screwy is happening here and on other tech web sites. The same Fandroids who were predicting utter failure for iOS because it didn't have Flash are now trying to blame Apple for the demise of Flash on mobile devices. These are the ones who regurgitated the "full Internet" talking points ad infinitum. So even with "500,000 activations per day" and a gazillion Android devices out there the evil entity known as Apple was still able to kill Flash? Really? Poor Adobe was at the mercy of a company with paltry market share (as they tell the tale)? The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. What does a Fandroid do for a migraine like that?
Dherten wrote:
... Thanks a lot Steve Jobs, your legacy is screwing people like me over sigh~
Hard to see whether this more moronic than offensive, or more offensive than moronic.
After 2 years of being told (a) how well Flash runs on Android, WinMobile etc and (b) that Android owns the market thus proving the widespread platform for Flash to flourish, we're now to believe that because Apple didn't support it on their one, losing-market-share mobile platform, it's Steve's fault that Adobe are pulling the plug.
Normally I can't be bothered to respond to idiocy like this, but this one's so profoundly stupid, I feel obliged.
"stupid", "fandroids", etc. etc. What I was saying is that I know both the Flash platform as well as the latest version of html. Have you ever used Flash, do you know anything about it? Were you around when Steve blocked it on iPhone when it was in the early stages of development? I doubt it. Fandroids? My experience has been from outside of the Mac collective, and it's a bunch of group think. That's my point, Flash is an excellent platform but the Apple people such as yourself have been anti-Flash for a long time I think because of that Jobs letter. It literally poisened the water hole and I watched it happen. A number of people say it was just a business decision, but being around the specific area as long as I have I think it was probably because of Flash's success over the quicktime player for video. Quicktime was supposed to be Apple's Flash I think and so I think it was a purposeful move to try to get rid of Flash. Wow how "stupid" of me to defend a platform that I know and like against a bunch of these not so accurate points.
Anyway, Adobe has decided it's not worth it to worry about the mobile browser anymore so the argument is over for the time being. Too bad, I know for a fact a lot of developers and engineers are very disappointed about this move, regardless of a bunch of people on this forum. If you had been paying attention to the technology you would know that the html5 performance is not even good on mobile devices, as well as the fact that html5 isn't even comparable to Flash in most ways. html5 merely means a few additional tags, such as canvas that give you basic drawing functionality. This doesn't compare to an entire development platform that is a self contained just in time rendering engine. html5 doesn't mean the web gets "better" it means the web devolves to what it was in the Flash version 6 days. That's the point, most of these "arguments" against flash are ridiculous. I don't like ads, well how about html5 ads? It's slow and a memory hog, what about memory hogging html5 canvas animations. All of these same arguments will exist regardless of the technology, there's just very little html5 even out there right now. "flash is proprietary", well the entire Apple product line represents the most proprietary company in existence. For those of us who know literally all about both technologies, it was obvious that this was not a fair argument or about innovating on the web, it was about trying to "kill" flash because that's just what the trend has been since it first came out and has been doing new things that html can't do from the beginning. Flash comes out with animations, html comes up with dhtml, flash has dynamic refresh, html comes up with ajax, Flash plays video, html eventually ads video tag. Flash does 3d, html tries to do webgl. Flash has been driving innovation in the internet for years and has been literally advancing html this whole time.
Anyway time to move on, I'm sure Adobe is right to just let it go when you are trying to reason with people who could care less. Kill Flash yea woo hoo! Let's all code in javascript for the rest of our lives in notepad! Ya!
Yes. I have used Flash. I didn't find it to be that really great. I found it to be nice and handy but I would never go so far as to call it great. I looked at Flash as a tool to do certain chores.
From what I am reading it isn't that Flash will die completely. It is only going away on the mobile platfrom. For the desktop and other computers with more powerful hardware, it will remain.
Personally I see it as a good choose here because I have always felt that Flash in mobile was pushing things a bit and now it appears that Adobe has come around to the same point of view.
Allan
Were you around when Steve blocked it on iPhone when it was in the early stages of development
You mean three years after iOS was released and after the two years Apple engineers were working together with Adobe on Flash for iOS?
That is "early stages of development"?
My experience has been from outside of the Mac collective, and it's a bunch of group think.
So non-Apple people are all groupthinking? They all go along with each other regardless of their own experience/thoughts?
Flash is an excellent platform but the Apple people such as yourself have been anti-Flash for a long time I think because of that Jobs letter.
You have that backwards. Steve Jobs letter came about because of the problems/complaints about Flash for Mac, which has always been garbage. Flash worked acceptably on most Windows machines.
Just have to love those guys showing up at the very end of the debate, knowing squat-all about the history or the arguments, then being so kind as to lecture everyone else about just what exactly things mean and how things actually must have happened.
I could correct him on the details, but he's beyond that: No sense confusing with yet more facts when his mind's already made up.
The market has judged, the story is over, move on.
Right, from what I know Apple didn't allow Flash player hooks to be hardware accelerated on their desktop OS for a long time and then complained that it wasn't hardware accelerated. Anyway, mobile browser is case closed for the time being. I think that now that they have released the version 11 for android they feel they have everything they need for mobile browser and are just trying to focus on the more valuable areas as was mentioned.
My deal is that I've heard more anti-Flash nonsense from iphone carrying people and it's always been an utter pain and has really been needless. I don't hear a bunch of anti-silverlight or any of that, just Flash because it's very wide spread and successful. As a developer who has really enjoyed doing Flash stuff for years I would have liked the Apple products a lot more if they wouldn't have blocked a technology that I like.
"I think that now that they have released the version 11 for android they feel they have everything they need for mobile browser and are just trying to focus on the more valuable areas as was mentioned."
You can think that if you want but the reality is that Adobe has given up on mobile Flash.
Apple is not able to respond to a technology like Flash, after 4 or more years, all we are not able to implement in their devices is an efficient flash functionality.
Years ago it was thought that by misuse of the designers and doing things without a proper tool debuggin and testing, flash now has more possibilities that the devices, while manufacturers like Apple are dedicated to making tools soft technologies such as HTML5 limited because Ecma languages
In a couple of years for the devices generate the same problems today with Flash, the issue is how far will be able to evolve, because the new iPhone 4s showed that despite Apple proposed lot for 2011, it fell to 10% of expectations ...
I think that the only way to be able to run flash, as an element in two years to ensure that teams are unable to support HTML5 developments will.
Flash player for Ipad
