What the iFuck is going on?

Posted by Jesse Freeman | Filed under Announcements, Featured

As many of you have noticed I have been incredibly vocal on twitter about how Adobe is handling the lack of Flash support on Apple’s new iPad device. It has taken a lot for me not to leave comments on the dozens of thrown together and at times pointless posts out there about how much of a travesty this is. I find it especially sickening to see people grab the pitch forks and go on a shouting/blaming witch hunt. I was doing alright until I read this post by Adrian Ludwig on Adobe’s Flash Platform Blog. The following is what I wanted to leave as a comment but it grew a little long for that:

I would like to make a few points and hope I don’t come off like I am attacking. I really love Flash and I have no reason to not want it on every device but here are a few things I found wrong with your post:

1) “The Flash Player has always been free to all consumers worldwide” is not accurate. In the beginning of Adobe/Macromedia’s experiments with mobile versions of the Flash player there used to be royalty fees and developer fees. This “openness” has recently evolved after failed attempts to monetize the mobile player. I may not be an expert on the subject but I remember wanting to be a developer for the Flash player that ran on mobile windows PDAs and there were fees involved that kept me away using it. Now that it is “free” is great but you still hold the keys to that system. Once all devices have Flash on them and Adobe changes it’s minds and decides to charge for the licensing companies will be forced to keep it since it’s customers are expecting Flash on their devices. One closed system is just as bad as another.

2) “It’s fast enough for other devices” is not the same as it runs exactly how users will expect it to run on their own computer. I know first hand the limitations of running Flash on a slow computer, I know this even worse trying to build complex apps on my 3.06 ghz iMac as well. The current Flash player performs less then ideal on desktops, worse on Macs then PCs, and we are seeing more and more serious security risks inside of the Flash Player. If I was serous about my systems security and performance I would take that into consideration. Also Flash may run fast enough in select cases but when you go to a site like IGN.com which uses huge Flash banners (which make the fan in my desktop kick into overdrive) it will take down the performance and responsiveness of the entire application. Finally I do not want my mobile safari browser to keep crashing on sites where Flash consumes more resources then it can handle. Flash developer have little to no real world experience right now building Flash apps to run on mobile devices and expecting poorly written Flash code to work out the gait on mobile and desktop is asking a lot. People will have to rewrite lots and lots of Flash code to make it completely seamless for desktop and mobile. And not to mention the years and years of old sites out there which were never intended to run on such a device.

I think my biggest issue with this argument about Flash being on the iPad has nothing to do with me not wanting it on there. Like I said I love Flash, been a happy developer for 8 years now. My main issue is watching Adobe, and all of it’s evangelists rally behind this issue while they ignore the countless problems on the desktop player. I don’t see anyone at Adobe rallying to implement GPU acceleration, real hardware acceleration, or staying ahead of Silverlight which is almost at feature parity.

Over the years I have watched Flash get less and less features after ever version. Now Adobe’s focus is clearly mobile and as a desktop developer, someone who is helping push the technology to it’s limits, inspiring other to learn Flash, helping feed the financial eco system that pays the bills of companies and Adobe, I feel left out and neglected. If the the desktop player received half of the attention mobile is we would see a Flash Player 11 release and not a slipping 10.1 release. It appears that Adobe is spreading itself way too thin trying to insert itself into every mobile device and failing to expand and innovate it’s very successful and well established desktop user base. Plus the cut backs and restructuring has me wondering how stable the company is. If mobile fails would that be the end of Flash. That makes me want to pick up other languages just to play it safe when for years I only developed for Flash because it was the future. Unity, HTML5,and Silverlight are the future now, what is being done about that?

My last point is that Adobe should think about pulling out of the Mac all together. It’s funny watching all of this go down when Adobe has a history of playing cat and mouse with the Mac when it comes to software releases and being committed to the platform. If Adobe feels so strong about Apple locking them out of this new device then you should put your money where you mouth is and pull out from mac all together. Now that is something I would get behind. Years ago during the switch to OS X I went to a PC simply because Adobe didn’t support OS X. I had no problem doing it especially since the Mac Flash Player was incredibly slower then the PC version. All of these posts keep pointing the finger at Apple like they are the only bad guy, he who hasn’t made a closed system can throw the first stone.

In the end I still love Flash. My anger is out of a desire to make Flash better but start with the biggest problem first not introduce 100s of little problems and slap bug fixes together as version updates. Thats all. I wish you luck in your quest to be a part of Apple’s cash cow. I don’t blame you, just don’t bite the hand that feeds you!

Permalink | January 29th, 2010

  • Chris
    Really you cant call it a complete internet experience without flash.

    How the hell is anyone ever going to compete with apples product releases? they get more news exposure then a natural disaster. Here I am hoping for some Android platforms to take off, they really need a marketing campaign.
  • The idea for Adobe to pull out of the Mac is interesting. I am going to paint the wild picture of a day when the Macbook Pro is replaced by an iPad-like screen docked to a keyboard base. Assuming something even remotely likely that could (or will) happen down the road, then Adobe won't need to do anything. Apple's iPhone SDK could become the only way for developers to work with any Apple computing product.
  • Great post and refreshing view.

    Feel as though I learned something new - thanks!
  • "I don’t see anyone at Adobe rallying to implement GPU acceleration, real hardware acceleration, or staying ahead of Silverlight which is almost at feature parity."

    Why would you? Adobe doesn't need to rally the public to effect change and direction in the Flash player. That's one of those benefits to 'holding the keys'. Adobe can just innovate.

    Secondly, who says the Flash player team isn't already aware and actively solving those issues? To think that Adobe is somehow less serious about the desktop because of a recent focus on mobile is silly. It sounds like an older child who is jealous of a new sibling. Adobe still loves you very much. <3
  • Peng
    Thanks for adding some much needed level headedness to this debate. Another issue that most people have failed to mention is the performance of the AT&T 3G network. Given the fact that current demand from iPhone users is already bringing the network to its knees, imagine what it would be like if Mobile Safari is sucking down megabytes of Flash content? Not a very good experience for sure.
  • OG
    Not a valid argument. If a site is sucking down megabytes of Flash content then there's something seriously wrong with that site. And whether those megabytes are being sucked down on a desktop or mobile is completely irrelevant to the point that Flash is absent from Apple mobile devices. If a user wants to sit through a horrible user experience on Mobile Safari that should be up to the user, the user should not be locked out of one of the most ubiquitous technologies on the web. The user can make the decision to go to another site, this isn't about poorly written Flash content, its about Steve Jobs being absolutely stubborn on adding Flash support because he hates Flash for taking QuickTime's "spot" on the internet.

    Android runs Flash... if Android is running Flash there is something wrong with iPhone OS and/or iPhone hardware if it can't run Flash all the same. We didn't hear the Android creators moaning and complaining about Flash player plugin when they implemented it on Android phones did we?
  • flashartofwar
    Flash 10.1 has not been released to the public yet so how well it runs is purely speculations. From the videos Adobe has release the framerate, browser redraw when scrolling and the random flickering that keeps showing up does not make me very excited to see the Flash sites I developed run on those limited devices.

    I do hope Flash makes it onto the iPad one day but I would rather see a much more feature rich and innovative Flash Player 11 over 10.1 on limited mobile devices.
  • I'm right behind you in thinking that this finger-pointing is getting out of hand. I bet on flash as an emerging technology worth jumping on back in the early 2000's and I've made a good living out of being a fulltime flash dev the last few years. However first and foremost I consider myself a 'web developer' and I think flash devs owe it to themselves to be looking to the future rather than trying desperately to maintain status-quo.

    I think a "plan for the worst, hope for the best" attitude is needed with regard to this issue, and people need to be thinking about how as a community we can start to think about building tools that capture the essence of why we love developing for flash - but author for js/HTML5 environments that are only going to become more needed as webkit becomes the default stack for more and more of the web. HTML5/js can't do everything that flash can do as well as flash can do it *today*, but tomorrow is not far off, and we need to hedge our bets on a non-flash future for the web, and make sure we're not left out in the cold.

    I think the flash community are in a unique position to be leaders when it comes to making HTML5/js development as designer friendly and creatively expressive as flash is today. I would not be at all surprised to see it be *flash* apps written to author that kind of content in the mid-term during this transition.

    Less complaining, more building of _solutions_ from these creative and talented people in our community who have the power to influence and shape what the post-flash internet might look like.
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