All Articles Tagged flash

Another analyst deflating missive from everyone’s favorite mythical Mac pundit, the Macalope. This time, the horny headed one explains why there’s no Flash or Java on the iPhone:

Uh, because they blow?

There’s more to it than that, of course:

And here we have the real issue. Sure, the iPhone could run Flash, but — particularly given the already unoptimized state of Flash on OS X — it would probably have to run some stripped-down, crappier version of Flash.

For the full story behind the various procs and cons, check out the full article, and also take a look at the Macalope’s weekly column for the latest Windows Mobile CES news — which makes TiPb wonder if Ballmer is picking his code names from Lady Marmalade these days…

According to Macrumors, Adobe and ARM, which is the chipset Apple uses to power the iPhone, have announced they’re making a special version optimized for mobile devices. (And, yes, to be snarky, I’ll believe that when I get a version optimized for Intel on the Mac, b’okay?)

Never the less, none other than chief Androidika Andy Rubin himself showed up at Adobe MAX today to show off Flash running on that other handset — the one I’m Round Robin‘ing this week, the G1.

Will that put pressure on Apple? Or if people start suffering Flash exploits, are subjected to Flash cookies, or get tired of jumping monkey ads, will it only harden Apple’s resolve?

Back in August AT&T sent out a customer satisfaction survey to all iPhone owners. Well now it seems a new survey is being sent out to all of us on the AT&T network asking how the 2.1 firmware is working for us and what we want to see next on your iPhone 3G.

Now don’t get too excited yet! Just because they are asking what we want does not necessarily mean we will get it. Keep in mind Apple has stated before that certain features such as copy/paste and directional GPS take a back seat to other issues that need addressing so on and so forth. But it is better than AT&T and Apple flat out ignoring us right? So at least it is a start.

Apple Insider states:

The questionnaire asks owners to pick the top five hardware or software add-ons they’d like to see and include many of the most prominent requests made in the community, including cutting and pasting text, built-in instant messaging, Flash/Java support and MMS messaging.

So when and if you get this survey, be sure to speak your mind and let AT&T what know what you want. This is our chance… they seem to be listening. (Or at least they are pretending to be!)

[Via Appleinsider]

The iPhone runs mobile OS X, a stripped down and highly optimized subset of Mac OS X. Adobe has just released Flash 10, including a version for Apple’s platform. Does this new version finally address all the bugginess and bloat, that has long plagued the non-Windows version of Flash? What about the general privacy and security concerns around Flash cookies and exploits? Ars Technica put the new builds through their paces, and Daring Fireball sums it up thusly:

Performance still sucks on Mac OS X compared to Windows Vista. Using the exact same computer (four-core 2.66 GHz Mac Pro with 6 GB of RAM), Hulu video playback consumes 56 percent CPU on Mac OS X 10.5 vs. just 7 percent on Vista.

John Gruber updates his post to say it’s not as bad as he first thought, but 2 times slower is still 2 (or more!) times too many. The iPhone is not as forgiving as a desktop or even laptop computer. If Adobe really wants Flash on the iPhone — as they keep harping to the media — why not make a highly optimized, super-fast build that would befit the OS X platform? You know, like Apple has done with Quicktime X?

How much kicking can an re-un-dead horse take before there’s just nothing left but steaming, rotting, fertilizer?

Speaking of which, Adobe is back in the news, again, touting Flash for the iPhone, again, and wondering out loud if Apple will support it, again. Just a couple days ago we went over some of the challenges and potential solutions to Flash on the iPhone, and we’ve already covered the neglectful bloat and bugs (Adobe’s never bothered to optimize Flash for OS X), security (opens additional attack vectors for hackers), and privacy (keeps secret cookies) issues that come with Flash, so why is this back on the radar? Politics.

Adobe is hoping the outcry from the ZOMG! Vidz! fan base, which probably doesn’t know about the above, but really wants to watch all that free porn video, combined with pressure from Google’s more “open” Android environment (which may or may not actually support Flash, and if it does, may or may not do so in a usable, non-evil manner), will force Apple to let Flash in the door.

We doubt it. AJAX for WebApps and Cocoa Touch for real Apps sucks the “air” out of Adobe’s Flash-pirations, and we’re pretty sure that’s a Good Thing for iPhone users (though, admittedly, not for Flash/Flex developers eager to get on Apple’s device but not willing to do so using standard or Apple-provided frameworks).

Personally, while we can see the slim chance for a stripped down, highly-optimized (and 3rd party cookie free!) Flash Player app for video and video alone, we don’t see Adobe getting what they really want: their bid for a Rich Internet Application development environment onto the most used mobile platform on the market.

Daring Fireball thinks it’s a non-starter as well. How about you? Think we’ll ever see Flash on the iPhone? Do we even want to? If so, why?

(Thanks Terry for the tip!)

TiPb loves answering your emails, but we also love sharing our answers with the community in hopes that more people will benefit, and even better answers will present themselves (hey, that’s why we have them forums!). For today’s debut TiPb Answers, reader Michael asks:

I can’t believe that my pet iPhone omission wasn’t a choice in the poll of what we’d like to see in iPhone 2.2. Flash support! Maybe a system update isn’t necessary to roll out Flash, but that has been my only gripe with my iPhone (other than having to deal with AT&T during purchase and setup). I can’t watch Hulu, or other Flash based video on my phone without it. I’ve wondered if this isn’t exactly Apple’s intent – why permit Hulu to compete with the iTunes store? What do you think?

TiPb answers, after the jump!

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Last week the UK ruled that Apple was misrepresenting the iPhone’s provisioning of “just the internet” due to the lack of support for two ubiquitously popular 3rd party plugins: Flash and Java. We’ve previously covered the will they/won’t they drama surrounding development and deployment of Flash and Java pretty much ad nauseum infinitum, as well as some seldom discussed yet surprisingly frightening concerns about Flash and its downright sneaky use of 3rd party advertising cookies.

More recently, however, another issue has come to light. Primarily concerned with Windows Vista security and how it can be circumvented, this issue throws a renewed focus on the danger of 3rd party plugins like Flash and Java, on how they interpret and run code on our machines, and how they provide an increasingly popular attack vector for bad guys (hackers, malware authors, identity thieves, etc.)

How does this all relate to the iPhone, and what about ZOMG! Can has my Flash vidz? Read on to find out!

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Casey already told us about how an iPhone ad was banned in the UK for “misleading consumers” about providing “just the internet”, and based on how many ZOMG! No Flash Vidz! comments we get, I’m going to go out on a limb and say most people probably share the belief that MobileSafari – ( Flash + Java) != the internet.

Fine.

But allow me to retort. As a long time web (and Flash) developer, however, I’m calling shenanigans on that, and on the UK Advertising Standards Authority. Flash and Java are factually and empirically NOT part of the open, standards based Internet (i.e. HTML, CSS, Javascript/AJAX). Flash and Java, along with things like SilverLight, Real, ActiveX, and a host of other proprietary add-ons are plugins, extensions, and otherwise additions to the Internet — with all the benefits and drawbacks that go along with that.

Like what? Read on after the break!

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Here at TiPB we’ve covered the heck out of the Flash on the iPhone debacle. Will it, won’t it, can it, should it, omgvidz!1 and privacy nightmares. But it just won’t stop. Current case in point, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen was once again let near a live mic:

We have a version [of (Mobile?) Flash] that’s working on the emulation. This is still on the computer and you know, we have to continue to move it from a test environment onto the device and continue to make it work. So we are pleased with the internal progress that we’ve made to date.

Great. Only Flash for OS X was never fully optimized by Adobe, making it a resource hog and increasing the bugginess of browsers (any guesses on how it will run on the iPhone?). Also, Apple hasn’t approached Adobe to do a MobileSafari plugin anyway, (though iPhone 2.0 seems to include a YouTube plugin…), and the iPhone SDK end user license still seems to disallow something like Flash (or Java) from running their own code. So, this means precisely what, exactly?

For those hoping to get Flex apps up on the iPhone, Apple already has an SDK and won’t allow a “competitive” dev environment to murky up their Cocoa Touch and SproutCore plans. From a dev point of view, sure it may limit apps from people already familiar with Flex, the same way it limits those already familiar with Java. While this may sacrifice the ability to leverage code from other platforms, most SDK demos rave about how fast porting has been, and really keen devs will just pick up the aforementioned Cocoa Touch environment and run with it anyway.

For those who just want them their vidz, Apple seems to be banking on YouTube via H.264 app and plugin being enough to stop a general revolt while they establish their “next big thing” mobile platform without Adobe’s tech being invited to the party. Will that be enough? Depends on how much people want everything beyond YouTube, from Hulu to pr0n. (And the obnoxious banner adds that will inevitably come with it).

Apple and Adobe need each other but also don’t seem to have the best of relationships. They’re both gambling big time, with huge stakes. Adobe has a more flexible hand (no pun intended) but Apple has a poker face that makes a mannequin look overly emotive.

My guess? No Flash for the iPhone remains the status quo. What’s yours?

UPDATE:

Iconfactory and Twitteriffic luminary Craig Hockenberry posts the funniest Flash on iPhone tweet ever on Twitter:

Hoping that Adobe will use a flash:// URL scheme. Would make it very easy to avoid on both the iPhone AND desktop.

Meanwhile, Adobe responds on their blog.

UPDATE 2:

Kontra ponders if this is all really a fight over the future of user interfaces, with Adobe trying to set their own cross-device conventions.

And Gruber points out even Apple’s own Quicktime content doesn’t run in-line in Mobile Safari, but launches a [Quicktime X?] player.

Which raises an interesting point: How would running video be handled in MobileSafari anyway? If you tried to swipe, scroll, pinch zoom, double-tap, etc., wouldn’t it create enormous resource demands on what’s still a small, mobile chipset? And if they lock the multi-touch down anytime Flash content (including ads) pop up, it makes the browser otherwise useless. Seems this would almost guarantee the need for an external player. (Or do the video game demos show that it could handle this well enough?)

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If the next great future of computing in the Cloud, as many pundits — not to mention Google — think, then the next great race is delivering that future via Rich Internet Applications. Right now, there are two major ways of doing this. The first involves using a proprietary, locked in technology (admittedly with increasing “openness”) like Adobe’s Air/Flex/Flash trifecta, or Microsoft’s .Net/Silverlight double team. The second is with truly open standards such as HTML, CSS, and AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) like Google, Yahoo, and many others use.

With the iPhone Apple has squarely planted itself in the second category. They even promoted them as a pseudo-SDK for a time! (And maybe gave up too soon?)

Flash-free, Silverlight-less, but full of interactivity and cloud-based applications, Apple just unleashed .Mac upgrade MobileMe complete with “desktop class” mail, calendar, contacts, and photo gallery web apps.

And according to this year’s WWDC buzz, they used SproutCore’s Javascript frameworks to do it? Why?

SproutCore not only makes it easy to build real applications for the web using menus, toolbars, drag and drop support, and foreign language localization, but it also provides a full Model View Controller application stack like Rails (and Cocoa), with bindings, key value observing, and view controls. It also exposes the latent features of JavaScript, including late binding, closures, and lambda functions. Developers will also appreciate tools for code documentation generation, fixtures, and unit testing. A key component of its clean MVC philosophy that roots SproutCore into Cocoa goodness is bindings, which allows developers to write JavaScript that automatically runs any time a property value changes. With bindings, very complex applications with highly consistent behavior can be created with very little “glue” code.

Check out the read link for more on Apple’s use of SproutCore, and how it might just be part of a growing trend for open standards-based web interactivity.

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