Many people who are on the edge of the technological bubble have been loosely following Apple and its rejection of Adobe Flash, but many people don’t understand why Apple has taken this stance.
Apple’s critics have cited many instances of how the company not supporting Flash is little more than a business tactic to undermine competitors. While that might be the case, there are many other problems with Flash, and Apple is smart to have passed it up.
The first — and most important — fact about Flash is that, for only playing video, it is a computer resource hog. When watching shows on Hulu, my laptop processor can heat up to 170 degrees — 50 degrees above the norm. That translates to my processor having to do a lot to handle the load Flash is throwing at it. Compare this to watching a QuickTime movie, which doesn’t elevate the processor temperature more than 10 degrees.
This temperature increase directly translates to energy consumption; the hotter a processor gets, the more power it is using. If a mobile device such as an iPad or iPhone were to use Flash, the battery would quickly be drained, leaving users complaining about poor battery life.
Apple responded to the video streaming questions by implementing (not creating) the HTML5 standard — the new Internet markup language standard, which includes video streaming capabilities.
HTML5 is quickly being adopted as the new standard for streaming video, and Apple even has a list of Web sites that use it and are thus compatible with the iPad and iPhone OS.
Another reason for passing on Flash is that Apple has a very structured and controlled model for application distribution. Though the process is far from perfect, and the company has been criticized for its practices, Apple desires to remain the only source of applications. If Flash were to be made available to the platform, it would also bring a new channel of application distribution, and Apple refuses to let that happen.
The bottom line is that Apple is looking toward the future and focusing on new standards in the industry. It views Flash as outdated technology that is processor-hungry and full of security holes.
The new HTML5 technology is much more robust, efficient and will eventually become the widely accepted standard.
Michael Padon is an engineering sophomore and may be reached at [email protected]
Flash isn’t just about running videos. it is about engaging and visually attractive applications and web experiences. Stay with your quicktime and iPhone. The rest of us are moving towards real progress, not taking a step backwards.
While it’s ok to defend your preferences, it is a foolish, transparent lie to pretend that Flash is the future. Adobe was once a great company. It has become lazy and complacent for more than a decade. It forgot Apple which made it a viable company and chased the POS PC market.
I don’t expect you to agree with me. I just say keep an open mind and especially watch what happens to Adobe and Flash over the next 2-3 years and remind yourself that Adobe chose this path of laziness and mediocrity. They were bound to become irrelevant.
Some other company will create a new useful Flash equivalent and brand new CS software.
Adobe has simply lost the plot since Warnock gave up.
btw why don’t you like Open?
Point taken, regarding “closed” standards versus “open” – except that Apple doesn’t have an “open” OS, and rejects even compiled versions of applications from Adobe, which smacks more of they want exclusive control of any closed standard, not closed standards being bad. If Apple was really concerned with standards compliance, it would admonish Adobe to make Flash applications that could be translated to MPEG4 for streaming media (which allows interactivity and so-on in its standards) – but they don’t want that.
They want to kill Flash as an interactivity development platform. Because they don’t own it.
If Apple doesn’t own the toy, it wants either nobody else to own the toy or doesn’t want it in its back yard.
Which is truly ironic, considering that it was Adobe Photoshop that kept a lot of design customers on Macintosh computers for so long. Biting the hand that feeds.
It’s this “closed format” that nearly killed Apple in the first place, and will kill it again. Less expensive, more open and equally as technically capable competitors will come along, and Apple will again shrink to its Abercrombie-and-Fitch wearing holier-than-thou corner without a Mac-compatible version of Photoshop.
Being hip has its cost, I suppose – one element of which is the claim to hipness correlates with an equal rise in perceptions as a douche.
Soon, the complete specs of HTML5 will be ready, implemented and widely adopted, and the CANVAS HTML element will be able to do everything flash does (but more efficiently), so, this is the real progress, not using some software written 15 years ago, in times when the desktop computers were ruling (aka: there was no concern over power consumption). I am a web developer, and I have always (and always will) hated Flash, it’s a waste of time and resources.
Flash does not necessarily have to be a waste of time, though I do agree it IS a resource hog. I’ve designed some pretty awesome websites on wix.com and its a totally flashed based online website builder. Adobe will probably come out with something better than flash and html5 in a few years; they HAVE to if they want to survive this new trend… and I do believe they have the resources! They’l’ probably have to do some intense collaboration with apple, either that or make html6 and patent it, lol.
wrong html 5 won’t be an official standard for 10+ years, you can’t count on html5 for at least another 10 or so more years. For example: IE 6, 7, and to most extents 8 are not html5 compatible, chrome and firefox are only partially compatible even as of today. Also the canvas can’t do anything close to what flash does, and it can really only do anything if you use javascript to make it happen. Canvas just provides a defined area and a set of cordinates that is all it does, its nothing more than a fancy table cell. Also the streaming video in html5 is not connection aware, meaning it can’t change streams based on user connection speeds, it only supports about 2 codecs out of a few hundred, now granted the move is to go to one or two standard ones, but still really limits you. And in the end to get html5 to do what flash / silverlight do takes more javascript code to run / work that you end up with a web page that is worse off than using flash in both performance and resources. My company have been actively testing that for our own development. So far html5 is losing out leaps and bounds, it is not standard in any of the browsers, and there is nothing that requires them to all be standard. Also since each of the main players run their own javascript engines you get completely differing performance / rendering issues with each of them. Now 30 years down the road we will be thanking the heavens, and the mom and pop websites that need an easy way to display a movie will have an easier time doing so.
Now for the flash is a resource hog, ALL WRONG AND 100% NOT VALID. Yes it is a hog on a laptop / PC but that is because you are not running Flash 10.1 mobile. Note that key word there mobile. Flash has it’s own version of the plug-in built for mobile devices and that version is very light weight and runs just fine, no resource hogging going on. So stop comparing grapes to peas.
Then enter the adobe’s compiler can’t be used to convert to native C for the Iphone as it is no longer accepted. It isn’t even using flash, or anything flash as far as the final app is concerned. It is native code for the Iphone. Which clearly points out, Apple wants to wall itself in, but can’t do that if flash and other developer tools are around. It want’s exclusive apps, not ones that are across the board, unless its a big developer. What I mean is you want to create an app for your business lets say an online store. If you develop the application in flash you can run it on the web, convert it to an iphone app, or distrubute it across every machine. Well now you can’t, now your flash app works on the web, but that still keeps Iphone / Ipad out of the loop. So if you want to reach the apple group you have to hire a programmer to make you an app for the iphone, and hope it doesn’t get blocked / banned cause even though you spent 5,000 bucks developing it, apple at any time can remove it and only pay you $50 for doing so, if you push the issue.
In the end though this is going to really hurt apple, as all the over vendors release tablets and phones that are not locked to apple store, are not locked to what content they can or cannot see, and are actually more standards compliant than Apple will ever be. And the killing point portable to other devices outside of Apple people will slowly drop Apple and move on to freedom devices.
Take a look at where Google, Adobe, and Microsoft are heading. Google + Adobe = platform to browse web, play games, reach cell phones with android, reach TV with Google TV (in the works right now). Or Microsoft with silverlight / xna which allows games, web, applications on TV(xbox360), mobile (win mobile 7) and web applications.
So you have Google+Adobe / Microsoft using the 3 screen setup. Where you write the application 1 time, and reach people at home, on the go, and on the internet. And the only thing you have to do is tweak the UI’s occasionally but since most use vector graphics even that is becoming less of a hassle, and both support themes / styles which can be quickly used for various systems.
Meanwhile Apple has what? A locked phone, an app store that will fall behind quickly, and no flash / silverlight support.
Think about this mobile 7 (windows) releases and since it compiles and runs XNA within weeks it will have hundred of thousand games in it’s app store, since it uses silverlight it will have hundred of thousands of applications. Think I am wrong? My company has 15 applications waiting for the phone’s release. And they are just a few that we have planned. We can crank the suckers out super fast though cause we reuse all the code we have built for our web applications. Just copy paste the application and modify for phone UI.
Google + Adobe can be a scary thought, give android flash, shockwave, flex, air all running native inside the android OS and things can get interesting.
So in the not to far off future Apple will be hurting, well no they will be doing fine, with 10% of the market share. meanwhile M$ and Google+Adobe, AdGoogle? Goodobe? Will all be racking in and laughing.
Key to any platform is taking care of your developers, if you have builders they will build. If you don’t have builders you will fail. And 90% of developers hate being locked into specialized situations with limited target reach.
I agree that Flash applications can be attractive, but that doesn’t alter the fact that Flash is a resource hog and contains security holes. As unpopular an idea as it is, I applaud Apple for not including support for Flash.
Plus, I can’t get past the idea that if Microsoft had developed Flash no one would use it at all.
I fail to see any compelling reason why Apple is right in rejecting Flash in your article.
If you really knew anything about Flash and the struggle that Adobe has had to go through just to get it on the Mac OSX, you probably wouldn’t write this article.
The reason the processor gets hot is because Apple won’t share the API’s that would promote hardware acceleration. In other words, Flash has to use the processor to render video rather than the graphics card. The underlying compression used in a Flash video is the same the compression used in most Quicktime Videos. On a PC with Microsoft Windows, Flash runs better than Quicktime and I’m still able to multitask.
What this means is that Apple has been purposely hindering the competition. If Microsoft did that, (which the did), they would get sued, (and they have). How is that right? It doesn’t help you as a customer. It just forces you to be compelled to use only Apple software. You like not having choice?
The power of Flash, hugely surpasses that of HTML5, Javascript, and CSS combined. Plus the goal of Adobe is to allow developers to develop one App and deploy it across all platforms. Imagine that. Working smarter, not harder.
So, tell me… How is that right, taking away your choice… Your right to use Flash if you wanted to. There is nothing right about it. It’s dictatorship.
Flash web applications are such a PROBLEM across the internet. They do not use the controls in the browser making them difficult to use. They also can take a long time to load and serve content. Flash websites are terrible and I avoid them at all cost. Aside from serving video (and in this sense as well b/c of the processor hogging) Flash sucks.
I should have the right to use that sucky program though and I will when I switch to anything but my iPhone after my contract is up. I shouldn’t have to pay so much for data if I can’t access all of the data on the world wide web.
I forsee in the coming months that some underground devs will give the tech community a bridge between the Adobe to Apple compiler and Apples new rules, a program that is able to totally mimic Apple’s compiler to the “T” and erases any trace of ever being flash. And Apple won’t be able to do a thing about it because it will be virtually untraceable. Obviously Adobe won’t block the add-on, and Apple will just have to act like it never happened!
All this discussion about Apple taking away your choice is silly. It’s like getting mad because your Playstation won’t play Xbox games. if you love Flash so much, don’t get an Apple product. Simple. You like to play Beta tapes, don’t get a VHS VCR. Of course Apple wants to control their revenue stream, they are a company that exists to make money (like all companies). It doesn’t make them evil or greedy, it makes them business minded. And judging by their bank account, I think they’re doing okay.
I’ve been in the computer world for 25+ years. I watched virtually every other computer platform fall to the mighty Microsoft juggernaut. All but one, the Mac. And the major reason the Mac didn’t fall was because the Apple philosophy was to control both the hardware and the software. Only then could the entire computing experience be intuitive, consistent, and “insanely great.” This is why Apple is still a company, and is presently in the process of catching up and very likely will surpass Microsoft as to dominate computer company.
I remember a time when every new computer program had it’s own interface, it’s own keyboard shortcuts, and its own design for how to make it work. The Mac changed all that. I also remember when Flash came out and I went to the Burton website, written entirely in Flash and I couldn’t figure out how to do anything. No links were highlighted, no menus anywhere. It looked cool, but it required an education to figure out how to use the site. Clever, urbane, erudite, idiotic! I wanted to buy a snowboard, not be impressed with the design suave of someone new love affair with Flash.
If Flash is allowed on the iPhone/Pod/Pad then grandma may go to a website and be confronted with an entirely unique interface that makes no sense to her what-so-ever. She’ll curse Apple, declare that fandangled thing confusing and tell everyone at the bridge club to forget buying one of those things.
This is an experience that Apple has frankly spent Billions trying to make sure doesn’t happen.
Do you want to curse them? Go ahead, they have to stay in business. If they loose the hardware/software monopoly on their own devices then there is no compelling reason to own a Mac. You can’t expect the company to go out of business for the “good of the masses” can you? Apple exists to make its shareholders money. It doesn’t exist as a public service for computer neophytes. Buy some Apple stock “appl” and watch it grow.
You know, there was time not long ago when every man was a mechanic and knew how to gap a plug, and advance a rotor, and tune a carburetor. Sorry, those days are gone. Get over it. For better or worse Apple is the future of computing for the foreseeable future. Don’t worry, free enterprise still works, and you can still buy whatever you want, so just wait. I suspect in your lifetime someone is going to come up with an idea that will change the computing world in a way we can’t even imagine and Apple will become a dinosaur. But for now, Apple is the best thing out there. Let them live long and prosper while they can. If you have a better idea bring it forward and bury them. It’s a free country.
If your CPU reaches 170*F while watching videos on Hulu, you might want to look into a better processor. I have a T2370 CPU in my lappy, and it barely breaks a sweat while watching anything flash related. I can have 10 tabs open in Chrome that will have something Flashed based in the background, and I’m fine. Maybe… if your OS supported memory and CPU management a bit better you wouldn’t have that issue.
The fact that Apple is shutting down Flash is wonderful – in a cynical sense. I love it because I’m a strong supporter of Android. Go ahead, shut Adobe down. It’s only going to leak out into the mobile PC realm. Soon Safari won’t have Flash, Adobe will pull the CS Suite from Apples, and I can go to work and ask the Apple users “Why’d you go Apple again?” It’s Steve Jobs in the 90s all over again… Fighting clone PC’s because they “Won’t catch on.” His business sense is tainted with all the acid he dropped in the 70s, living in some surreal world where he dominates to PC business. Flash would be lovely for mobile phones. The ability to view pages like NBA.com, or some certain Club or Restaurant websites. It’s quick and efficient. I personally think Jobs’ doesn’t want it because it’ll cut into him controlling his entire market. With websites that offer free Flash games, he’s not making any money off it. So what better way to make as much money as possible than to block one of the biggest META Languages out there.
As far as QuickTime running ‘better’ than Flash… I beg to differ. That application has caused me troubles since it was released for Windows based machines (and mind you I grew up on Apple). It consistently crashes, it’s bloat wear, and hogs resources. Why does it need to be run in the background 24/7? It’s insecure (in comparison to Flash) and the sites I frequent don’t use it for anything.
I say do it Jobs. Ban Flash, ban everything that makes you mad. It’s just going to make Android, Symbian, WinMo and RIM bigger.
“Apple desires to remain the only source of applications. If Flash were to be made available to the platform, it would also bring a new channel of application distribution, and Apple refuses to let that happen.”
So part of your defense is that Apple wants to be a monopoly therefore they don’t want flash available because flash will make it so they aren’t a monopoly? Did you seriously just say that? And people complain about microsoft as m$ *eyeroll*
I completely agree. This article is defending Apple’s right to give us 3/4 of the internet in order to weasel more money out of us? It isn’t just hulu I’m missing out on. Many websites are flash based and when I visit them all I see is a box. Not all of them have html only versions because Flash is everywhere. This is unacceptable to me and as soon as my contract is up, adios iPhone. I’ll move onto Droid which allows you to really use the internet. All of it. Not just certain sections that are monetarily beneficial to Apple. Apple is the greediest, nastiest company on the planet I swear.
@Tim and others who seem to be able to look but simply do not see beyond the end of their nose.
Compare Apple and Adobe, unemotionally, objectively. Look and SEE what’s happening.
A few years ago they were both worth about the same. Today Apple is the 3rd largest corporation in the world. Adobe is one of the smallest in the stock market. Imagine that. Am I lying? Check it yourself.
Apple is worth $235 Bn today. Adobe? Only $18Bn. Apple has $40+ Bn in CASH and near-cash investments. It’s more than 12 x bigger than Adobe after less than 15 years. It could buy Adobe twice, all for cash, and still have $4Bn left over. How are such stats possible if Adobe is a well run company that knows what it is doing and is helping Apple to (cough, cough) survive?
If you related a fact or three in the rubbish you Adobe fans write here, that would be a lifetime first for you. Lie whydontcha? Why abandon the habits of your lifetime? It’s what you do best.
Meantime Apple is widely admired and loved and, in 3 years or less, it will be the biggest AND finest company in the world. It’s already getting pretty large in MS’s rear view mirror. Scary large. Why do you think Gatesy took early retirement?. He did not want to be there at the controls for the coming train-wreck. I know you Adobe loyals won’t buy this. But you don’t have to. I don’t care if you too get shot in the foot, like Adobe. Just look, listen and see what happens by 2012-13. If you have ADBE shares sell them.
If you think Apple shits on everyone, why is it the most popular company in the world? Why is it rated #1 for quality and service by its users? Why do people just love it?
Many of you guys complaining about Apple and praising Adobe really need the mental equivalent of a pair of specs. You see, but you refuse to ‘get it’.
Adobe needs Apple, not the other way around. Apple users are a huge part of Adobe’s high-end customer base. High-end = they spend money to buy Adobe products. Most PC users get pirate copies. Adobe knows this. Apple has not needed Adobe for 10 years or more. If Apple cared enough for its friend turned betrayer, they could buy Adobe from their petty cash. I’m not joking. Just go to Yahoo Finance or other market site and look up AAPL and the ADBE – get their balance sheet cash figures.
Adobe is in decline because they forgot what was important – their users and corporate friends. Apple cares only about its users and corporate friends. That’s the difference.
If you’re American, you should be proud of Apple, not diss it unfairly. It is the greatest, most admired company in the world. No other comes close.
Finally, if you can stand a little truth about Apple v Adobe and MS too, read these sites/pages:
http://counternotions.com/2010/04/13/suicidal/
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/04/14/chronicles-of-conflict-the-history-of-adobe-vs-apple/
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/04/10/five-tremendous-apple-vs-adobe-flash-myths/
chano
Of Apple and Adobe, whose job would it be to introduce the concept of “secondary click” to the iPhone core UI? Most Flash “movies” depend on this concept. If Apple adopts Flash, then presumably the onus would be on Apple to incorporate this core functionality, perhaps fundamentally altering the UIX of the device.
Someone mentioned Apple being ‘open’. Their OS sure isn’t – it’s more like Windows in that respect. It’s based on Unix, sure, but that is Darwin. You have to be a super-genius to compile the Mac OS X kernel yourself, since there are no manuals and the pieces are all over the web. There is no centralized location for them. Not a claim to ‘openness’.
Seriously? Of course apple wants to control it’s own market so it can make more money. Why is making money a bad thing all of the sudden?
That’s how they stay in business.
People are freaking out about this – Duh apple wants control over its own user experience, that’s why people buy the damn devices.
Duh it’s a closed environment, but it works.
Some people just need to grow up and realize that both companies have their policies and apples aren’t some crazy take over the world freak and everything, they need to maintain their user experience.
Relax people, this is apple trying to compete with adobe, and winning. If adobe weren’t losing so badly, then people wouldn’t be pointing the finger at apple going “they have a better, working business strategy, oh no oh no”
It’s way easier to develop with Flash CS5 compared to Apple’s XCode. They’re hurting developers and the public here. The output is the same XCode or Flash both produce an iPhone/iPad equivalent binary. Apple’s being an idiot. People should break website content viewing for iPhone/iPad until Apple changes their licensing agreement for the better.
“Apple desires to remain the only source of applications” This is the same as a monopoly. As a developer, I would rather use FLASH than Objective C. HTML5 with H.264 is a maybe against flash which steams the same content in a lightweight FLA format. But H.264 is a licensed format that may go the way of GIF 89a. Besides the interactivity and development resources for FLASH are way better than anything Apple has to offer. HTML5 will and is becoming a new standard by FLASH is not going anywhere. HTML5 cannot replace Flash!
It isn’t an issue of whether “HTML5” will replace “Flash,” so far as the codec battle goes. The codec discussion is just a fragmentary issue that ultimately fails to speak to the more serious, underlying issues.
And in any event, it’s not HTML5 that threatens Flash’s popularity as a development environment/tool, it’s JavaScript and its increasing popularity through the influx of JavaScript libraries. The debate between HTML5 and Flash largely centers on the underpinning proprietary-versus-open codec debate.
Bear in mind that Flash is not a free tool, whereas jQuery, mootools, Prototype.js, and so forth are. Moreover, one does not have to learn a completely new IDE to get started with them. Flash presents a barrier of entry to coding in ActionScript. And in the end, you’re writing ActionScript in a closed environment, one you have to pay for. This contributes to Flash’s waning popularity, and this has absolutely nothing to do with HTML5. To be sure, HTML5 will lend to the increasing decline Flash developers but only because of what it enables them to do as JavaScript developers. Moreover, Flash presents a fundamental conflict with the Web developer community overall since they depend, despite their complaints, ultimately on the backbone that is the W3C.
Bottom line is, Flash is an overlay to the technologies the W3C (and for the most part the Standards community) aspire to standardize.
For instance, look at how we have to apply SEO techniques to Flash sites now. We have to parallel content in the Flash to the content that appears in the HTML structure. That’s double the work. Moreover, we have to use JavaScript to negotiate with user agents to give Flash accessibility (where there’s more “JavaScript” housed within the Flash). Of course, this point only holds water depending on the complexity of the Flash movie itself. And that’s ultimately what this entire debate comes down to: do we treat JavaScript like a tool language, in some cases — a launching tool for Flash, in spite of the amazing things that can be achieved with it — doubling our efforts as developers, mucking up our code bases, etc., or do we drop Flash because of those reasons just mentioned? (Look at it this way: Apple has invested a lot of time in adopting Web standards. Clearly there is a conflict here when the adoption of Flash would just make their efforts to shape their Safari browser, for instance, into a viable competitor to IE, Firefox, etc. a waste of money.)
Like with JavaScript and its sudden maturity as a professional language, we will begin to more parsimoniously adopt Flash on particular projects. But our judicious use of Flash will for the most part be generated from our understanding of JavaScript and the libraries which enable it to achieve once-thought-to-be Flash-only behaviors.
The codec war between Mozilla et al is just an easily digestible, obvious problem. It’s an aside, to say the most, and so it does not really speak to the question of whether “technology or language X will replace Flash.”
HTML5 does support video streaming but it is extremely glitchy. Try using the html5 beta on youtube, it is horrible.
You should all take a look at the open letter Steve Jobs just posted to apple.com.
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/