It's true that it didn't help, but the main reason is the success of the app stores on mobile.
People install apps a lot more easily on mobile than desktop, it's better for developer as well especially regarding monetization which means there is really no reason for a plugin.
He wasn't proven 'right' as much as 'successful'. He wanted to keep flash off the iPhone and iPad and he succeeded. Just because Adobe, faced with a ban on the most important mobile platform, decided mobile flash wasn't worth the development effort doesn't mean that they couldn't have created a viable player on iOS. With enough money and the improving hardware of devices, they almost certainly could have. But even then they'd be left with the fact that native apps are succeeding far better than web apps on mobile devices anyway.
The AIR runtime is basically Flash Player and it's allowed on iOS — it sucks. Adobe also spent years on Flash Player for Android and it's not that great.
As if Adobe has some right granted by the deities to have their precious plugin on every platform under the sun. And as if Apple singled out Adobe (there are no plugins on iOS). If the iPhone was a flop Adobe wouldn't have cared about being on iOS, just like they never cared about being on Linux even when users were begging for it. Adobe has displayed nothing but contempt for non-Windows platforms and they only started whining because iOS was successful. Where's the fuss over being "banned" on Windows Phone 7?
If Adobe is capable of delivering a good runtime for ARM platforms then where is it? They had time, more than enough time.
If I were going to blame anything, I think it would be Adobe's decision to treat every desktop platform other than Windows as a second class citizen. The Linux and OS X flash players have been horrible for a long time. When mobile OSes were released that were derived from these two, the results of this strategy were fatal to mobile Flash.
Absolutely. Steve Jobs' vendetta came from the same rage every single other Mac user experienced, and what every iPhone user would face today if he hadn't said no.
It really bothers me that people seem to think that flash works well on windows.
And that's even before taking into account that flash is a gigantic security hole (on all platforms) and that adobe still can not, after all these years of misery, push updates well (to windows clients at least).
Google did the world a huge favor by developing Chrome and thus make it so blatantly obvious what crap flash really is (putting the blame where it belongs as they so delicately put it). It's become much better the last year but some things you just can't rescue and it should be banned from use just for security reasons anyway.
> It really bothers me that people seem to think that flash works well on windows.
It pretty much works (at all), which is a far cry from the experience on OSX and Linux both.
And that's not limited to plugin either, during the holiday I've been out with only a macbook. Wanted to play Binding of Isaac, which is in Flash and cross-platform.
Performances on my Win7 machine are good, especially in fullscreen (there are some slowdowns when windowed). On OSX it was absolutely dreadful, any time half a dozen missiles were on the screen the game would just crawl down to single-digit FPS. I was not able to play any Binding during the holiday, it was just too horrible.
On many fronts including security, I think Adobe lost a marketing battle to Apple.
Nothing to be proud of but for the last couple of years, Apple products have had as many security vulnerabilities as Adobe products, if not more. Adobe still gets much more flak owing to their ubiquitous nature (maybe they should).
On the other hand, the market treats Apple like a security expert's dream (which it is not).
I dislike Flash (mainly because it's unnecessary and decreases browser usability), but I've not been witness to this supposed utter horribleness on OS X that everyone always talks about.
In my experience, it runs about the same as it does on Windows. That is, fine enough, but sometimes CPU hungry. It used to crash Safari sometimes, but that hasn't happened in recent memory.
It may be a horror on Linux, but I think many Apple users exaggerate because they also dislike it for other reasons.
What planet are you on? Have you ever viewed a youtube video before? Fire up activity monitor and watch a youtube video -- your cpu utilization will hover around 30%. Poorly coded apps have much higher cpu utilization. However, if you fire up youtube videos on windows, the cpu utilization barely goes above 3%.
If you visit a site like teevox.com where the flash app takes up the majority of the screen, the cpu utilization hovers around 150% -- your fan cranks on and your laptop becomes a mini space heater. Try it in windows and again, the utilization barely goes above 5%.
I watch YouTube all the time and sometimes watch BBC iPlayer full screen and my MBP's fans don't become noticeable. I'm not in the habit of watching Activity Monitor without cause.
I do recall that my previous MacBook (the first plastic C2D one) used to peg the fan(s) quite often. Maybe things vary a bit by what graphics chipset is available.
To be honest, I never really liked the whole concept of an third-party "web plugin" for the browser? Either support the file-formats inside the browser or just download the file and let some (native) app of my choice deal with it? Would that be so bad?
I even question the wisdom of inline graphics? The screen is not really like paper. If there is a need for a "figure 1", then it would be almost always be more useful to have it display in a separate window next to the browser, so that you don't have to scroll up every time the text refers to something on this figure?
It might be in some implementations, but not always: Given a large enough display you could set them side by side and what could be easier then looking left/right?
Requiring scrolling is usually bad enough and only becomes worse the greater the distance.
Adobe doesn't need to point the finger at anyone, they only need to look as far as their own product to see why a company so focused on user experience and security, like Apple, would decide against it. Adobe never seemed to take Flash on Linux based OS's seriously. Now that those systems are becoming more popular, Adobe is trying to play catch up, not succeeding, and trying to point the finger elsewhere.
However, I read Mike Chambers' blog post that this thread's article is based on. It doesn't sound like he's explicitly blaming Apple for anything. He states:
Just to be very clear on this. No matter what we did, the Flash Player was not going to be available on Apple’s iOS anytime in the foreseeable future.
... and ...
... given the fact that one of the leading mobile platforms (Apple’s iOS) was not going to allow Flash Player in the browser, Flash was not on track to
reach anywhere near the ubiquity [it has on desktops].
Is he going after Apple there, or merely stating facts?
24 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 54.0 ms ] threadThis is an evolution of technology, plain and simple.
People install apps a lot more easily on mobile than desktop, it's better for developer as well especially regarding monetization which means there is really no reason for a plugin.
Now, if we could just get rid of it on the desktop, things might be much better. CBS.com, I'm looking at you. Hulu, you can do better also.
Once again, by the way, despite the cacophony of personal attacks that it produced at the time, Steve Jobs has been proven right.
As if Adobe has some right granted by the deities to have their precious plugin on every platform under the sun. And as if Apple singled out Adobe (there are no plugins on iOS). If the iPhone was a flop Adobe wouldn't have cared about being on iOS, just like they never cared about being on Linux even when users were begging for it. Adobe has displayed nothing but contempt for non-Windows platforms and they only started whining because iOS was successful. Where's the fuss over being "banned" on Windows Phone 7?
If Adobe is capable of delivering a good runtime for ARM platforms then where is it? They had time, more than enough time.
And that's even before taking into account that flash is a gigantic security hole (on all platforms) and that adobe still can not, after all these years of misery, push updates well (to windows clients at least).
Google did the world a huge favor by developing Chrome and thus make it so blatantly obvious what crap flash really is (putting the blame where it belongs as they so delicately put it). It's become much better the last year but some things you just can't rescue and it should be banned from use just for security reasons anyway.
It pretty much works (at all), which is a far cry from the experience on OSX and Linux both.
And that's not limited to plugin either, during the holiday I've been out with only a macbook. Wanted to play Binding of Isaac, which is in Flash and cross-platform.
Performances on my Win7 machine are good, especially in fullscreen (there are some slowdowns when windowed). On OSX it was absolutely dreadful, any time half a dozen missiles were on the screen the game would just crawl down to single-digit FPS. I was not able to play any Binding during the holiday, it was just too horrible.
On many fronts including security, I think Adobe lost a marketing battle to Apple.
Nothing to be proud of but for the last couple of years, Apple products have had as many security vulnerabilities as Adobe products, if not more. Adobe still gets much more flak owing to their ubiquitous nature (maybe they should). On the other hand, the market treats Apple like a security expert's dream (which it is not).
In my experience, it runs about the same as it does on Windows. That is, fine enough, but sometimes CPU hungry. It used to crash Safari sometimes, but that hasn't happened in recent memory.
It may be a horror on Linux, but I think many Apple users exaggerate because they also dislike it for other reasons.
If you visit a site like teevox.com where the flash app takes up the majority of the screen, the cpu utilization hovers around 150% -- your fan cranks on and your laptop becomes a mini space heater. Try it in windows and again, the utilization barely goes above 5%.
I do recall that my previous MacBook (the first plastic C2D one) used to peg the fan(s) quite often. Maybe things vary a bit by what graphics chipset is available.
I even question the wisdom of inline graphics? The screen is not really like paper. If there is a need for a "figure 1", then it would be almost always be more useful to have it display in a separate window next to the browser, so that you don't have to scroll up every time the text refers to something on this figure?
Requiring scrolling is usually bad enough and only becomes worse the greater the distance.
However, I read Mike Chambers' blog post that this thread's article is based on. It doesn't sound like he's explicitly blaming Apple for anything. He states:
Just to be very clear on this. No matter what we did, the Flash Player was not going to be available on Apple’s iOS anytime in the foreseeable future.
... and ...
... given the fact that one of the leading mobile platforms (Apple’s iOS) was not going to allow Flash Player in the browser, Flash was not on track to reach anywhere near the ubiquity [it has on desktops].
Is he going after Apple there, or merely stating facts?
*nix-based, OSX is not (and has never been) Linux-based, and Flash has always been absolutely dreadful on it. Still is.