666 - the Number of the Farrell - Mad Mike Mageek
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Jobs' damns Flash
APPLE FANBOI RELIGIOUS ICON Steve Jobs has justified his casting out of Adobe Flash from his gadgets, claiming that the ubiquitous image display software is a CPU resource hog.
In a meeting Jobs spoke forth and said unto executives at the Wall Street Journal that verily Flash is an abomination in his sight, for is it not a CPU hog, full of security holes, and old technology that crashes Mac OS X? He further said that Flash was like unto the floppy drive that he had banished from his Macs.
Thus did Jobs spake and sayeth that Flash shall be flung into the outer darkness and trouble his fanbois not. Verily neither shall it appeareth on the true and holy Ipad, which is the first tablet in the world, nor on the Iphone, which is the only true phone. Jobs spaketh, expecting the attentive executives to nod, and they did nod and wrote down what he had revealed unto them.
Jobs has had it in for Flash for years. Two years ago he said that the PC Flash version "performs too slow to be useful" on the Iphone, and that the mobile version, Flash Lite, is not capable of being used with the web.
He also recently moaned to Apple employees that Flash was responsible for all the crashes on the Mac. After all his Mac OS X is perfect and never crashes even when it appears to do so.
Other Jobs anti-Flash claims, however, are simply bizarre. He said that the Ipad's battery performance would be degraded from 10 hours to 1.5 hours if it had to spend its CPU cycles decoding Flash content. It is incredibly unlikely that the Ipad will manage to play media content using any sort of video software and still deliver ten hours of battery life.
So why does Jobs have it in for Adobe? It is because it is mainstream and big enough to tell him to go forth and multiply. Jobs expects people who supply software for his gadgets to bow and scrape and do just what he tells them to do and nothing else. Adobe software does not work well with Macs but that is also because Steve does not want to adapt his software to Flash rather than the other way around. It would not be difficult to get Flash working on the Mac but Jobs does not want to change any Mac OS X code and Adobe can't be bothered for such a small number of users.
However Jobs' legendary stubborn behaviour is really screwing up Apple users because it prevents them from being able to view Flash content on web pages.
Jobs suggested to the Wall Street Journal that it should abandon the use Flash and use the H.264 video compression system, which is compatible with both the Ipad and the media players installed in most web browsers.
But what Jobs failed to mention is that H.264 is proprietary and patented, and it can't do all the things Flash does. While it can handle video, it does not process interactive graphics, as Flash does.
What Apple fanbois don't understand is that Jobs is making them pay for the fact that he demands his own way and does not want to bend. µ
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Flash is not just slow, it has always had extremely hostile interface metaphors that make development of interactive content tediously difficult. It was a hugely successful animation program that has morphed into an application platform, but it remains heavily tied to the original metaphors, most of which were not so well thought out in the first place.
Just a question, what mobile OS supports the desktop version of flash? It is the desktop version of flash that gives you the full web experience, flash light won't cut it. Time for browsers to offer full HTML 5 support and SVG for vector art.
Apple and I have been in conflict for many years. It started when I wrote software for early (80s) computers. Apple would threaten me with cease and desist orders for writing for their Apples without their permission. Nothing ever came from these threats.
Anyway, I have used and programmed iPhones for 4 years until I got frustrated with the limitations and gave them away. I now use an HTC Pro 2 tweaked and supercharged with flash. The problem is that the battery drains fast under heavy flash use. I solve this problem by taking a minute and putting in a fresh battery. Try doing this with an iPhone! If you are good, it might take an hour (don't touch the wrong contact or BOOM)! After using an iPhone with flash for only 2 hours, who wants to sit and wait to recharge the unit? Also, your can't support one thing (the iPad) if you don't support the other (the phone). 18 million users would get very upset. So you knock down the threat, FLASH and also Adobe.
"why doesn't windows mobile support html 5?"
the difference is, if you don't like MS's browser (and from what I hear, the mobile brower is pretty crap) you can install your own
my personaly view is that flash IS bloated, bugged, cpu-hogging etc... and I still want to use it, because there's a lot of content that needs it. In an ideal world i'm sure i'd take a stand and do without, but life's too short, and I want my kitten videos.
oh, and html 5 isn't even CLOSE to being a standard yet. Do you really want an MS product implementing it, given that they will then have to support THAT implementation for several years, even if the actual spec changes? be careful what you wish for... don't ask for IE to implement anything that might change
Are you sure Steve hasn't confused Flash with QuickTime, which has been painfully slow bandwidth hog from day one.
My title didn't say it all? Okay, Jobs is a D@%che Bag
Don't use quicktime then ... it has Flash in it.
and that is a mention of "Silverlight" from Microsoft. They 'seem' to be doing the right stuff, atleast, as far as video content goes ... keeping DRM for content distributors but making it easy for people to publish their own content with comparatively much better performance than Flash across the OSs. They just need more apps and games!
Nick's not the only one who can see through Jobs' lies. DailyTech has a very similar stance on it:
http://www.dailytech.com/Apples+Jobs+Says+Flash+Crashes+Macs+No+Flash+for+iPad+iPhone+Planned/article17738.htm
"Jobs adds that Apple got people to ditch floppy disks and CD, will get people to ditch Flash
In the wake of the iPad launch, Apple CEO Steven P. Jobs launched into a cross-country media tour. Even as his much ballyhooed tablet was being picked apart by critics who questioned its ability to serve as a competent eBook reader, Mr. Jobs visited The Wall Street Journal and other major news industry players in an effort to boost the device's public perception.
However, Mr. Jobs found the folks at the WSJ were asking him the same question, a question that had infuriated him time after time -- "Why doesn't the i<device have Flash?"
Jobs' mobile devices boycott of Flash, one of the most widely used internet formats, is close to extraordinary. Even Microsoft, who has its own competitive format (Silverlight) has cooperated with Adobe in ensuring Flash runs smoothly on Windows PCs and is ported to Windows smartphones. Apple, meanwhile, has been almost the only major player to play the role of Flash obstructionist.
Apple has its reasons. Flash on a base level provides a very real threat to Apple's lucrative App Store, one of the key things that it uses to differentiate the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad from its competitors. If Apple adopted Flash, many of its developers could move to Flash which would free them of the restrictions of Apple's App Store approval process. And that would ultimately ruin the exclusivity of Apple's app catalog and make Apple vulnerable to handsets with superior hardware. Also, with Flash customers could simply view TV episodes from Hulu for free, rather than buy them from Apple's iTunes store.
To try to obscure this fact, Mr. Jobs has stepped up his attacks on the format. At the WSJ meeting, he reportedly called Flash a "CPU hog" and a source of "security holes." And he smartly jabbed, "We don't spend a lot of energy on old technology."
He then claimed that Apple was responsible for getting people to abandon a host of technologies including floppy drives (by lack of inclusion in the iMac), old data ports (including its own), CCFL-backlit LCD screens (Apple now uses LED backlighting), and, most questionably, CDs (he says CDs are dying due to Apple's iPod, iTunes Store, CD-ripping software and the "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign). The reality distortion field seems particularly in full blast with the last claim, as there were 300 million CDs sold last year (that's 80 percent of all album sales industry-wide).
He followed those dubious claims with another. Apple will get people to abandon Flash.
Flash, he argues is simply no good. It crashes Macs (granted, Macs have had plenty of problems recently with nary a Flash app in sight) and runs too slow for his tastes. He also claims that Flash would reduce the iPad's battery life from 10 hours to 1.5 hours.
He says it would be "trivial" for online content providers to bow to Apple's will and replace Flash content with H.264 video codecs. To an extent he may be right on this point -- the H.264+HTML5 movement is gaining momentum. However, even here Apple is trying to control what is and isn't allowed. HTML 5 can also be made to support the free Ogg Theora codecs, but Apple has tried to block that, in favor of the expensive, proprietary H.264 format, a source of a growing squabble. Ultimately, regardless of which format is embraced HTML5, though, seems unlikely to be able to offer as deep user input and particularly the graphics-generation libraries as Flash."
The thing is you can stop a webpage, but usually flash ads etc.. keeps on playing, and it was probably those you wanted to stop in the first place.
Then there is the part where Adobe lags behind the times, still no 64-bit Flash or Shockwave.
The iPad is NOT the first tablet. Though I'm sure Job's would like us to think it is. It's quite late to the tablet game, and probably already game over for it.
Which is what jobs means when he says use H.264. Flash for the IE crowd, HTML 5 for the rest.
It gets harder for graphics.. on the hand you have browsers that support Canvas and SVG (enough to replace flash), and then you have IE. However, this would require actual "double" work, unlike publishing video.
The tablet will help push the first solution (since in essence it's not so hard to do), the second one though, I doubt it..
Jobs admits that neither of these APPLE devices have enough guts to run flash like a real computer or powerful smartphone should.
Therefore, Jobsy just issues a direct order to his flock that "thou shalt not useth flash", and instead points their wallets at his iTunes milking machine.
Power-mad creep. Him and Ballmer make a good pair.
It's not just Flash. Apple has always been proprietary about all their gear/software/accesories. I used to buy Apple, back in the 80's/90's. Apple stuff is good. I started buying outside Apple when it couldn't do what I wanted or prevented me from doing what I wanted, namely PC gaming and letting me manage my music library my way.
It's not all bad though. When you're proprietary you are very stable. I wanted options more than I wanted stability. Yeah, my stuff crashes a bit more often but I can do a LOT more with it and do it the way I want.
Is the Ferret suggesting that the operating system should be adapted to make one piece of software run faster?
What? That's not how you do software, no sir.
It's also not that Flash crashes the OS, it's the host process it used to run in. The browser, that is.
Anyway, Adobe has already admitted that Flash sucks on the Mac and that it will try to improve it by doing the right thing: using Apple's fast and flexible APIs.
But it's too late anyway. Adobe has pissed off Apple (read: Jobs) so many times it doesn't matter anymore. Adobe and the people who use their software have moved from the Mac over to Windows and Apple is making their money selling mobile devices and media.
IMHO Apple has a couple of problems with Flash
#1 On iP[od|hone|ad], it's content comes free of charge,
#2 but will likely freeze the OS. Possibly to the point of having to take out the battery....
#3 Which would neccesiate a rewrite of the OS to make it multitask properly
#4 And judging by the comments concerning MacOS that won't be enough,
#5 to keep the "working perfectly" notion with the user base.
So please keep on discussing the merits of Flash while ignoring evidence that proper platforms - e.g. Linux on *anything* - do keep up with it.
Way back before Public knew power of these machines in early 1960s' pdf scream era, RA:Same As SELF,went bit further & grabbed macro code that runs Media & Now: flash & much Present day media, if adobe can, I Can, Is MY Feelings.
Well, in 1995/98 timeframe macro Media Became Public from thomas stewart von drashek MD Vault.
MacroMedia became that one office second story business on Washington Av Across street from Varsity Theatre in MPLS,M n.
Once MacroMedia knew Me, myself & i would never let in to pressure to Charge fee, macromedia upped with MY property & sold mess to Adobe, as felt could beat thomas stewart von drashek by conveant from pdf Fight & adobe pretty good at shucking public.
macromedia moved in with adobe, that brought in above mentioned wigglin' Flash pop ups, From COMSTOCK Mining,COMCAST. Idea is that Women are greatly afeared of wigglin thangies & thats good insult, as ads are worthless.Pressure by Fear Mongers, thruOut Net Today, Just One More Bit.
That brings US to NOW & need to DUMP Adobe Altogether & more importantly, Go Well Beyond Flash. FLASH IS PUBLIC PROPERTY(so is pdf), STOLEN FROM PUBLIC DOMIAN BY SELF & USER BE VICTIM.
Html 5.0 is best next step, yet 2+3 years off for good stand at UseFulNess. In Moments of PRESENT, SILVERLIGHT Is Important BEST Next Step.
Signed:PHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART von DRASHEK M.D. 19FEBRUARY2010
So I stopped programming for Mac's when Jobs came back, not enough users to make a living, but he is right.
Claiming Flash is just a programming language is probably a little inaccurate, it is also an environment. That said it has two problems, both of which could be fixed by a browser, but is really Adobe's responsibility.
1. I want to be able to limit the processing power that can be dedicated to flash, e.g. 0% - 10% ... 100%. Otherwise any crappy developer can bring my system to it's knees.
2. Fix flash so when the system goes quiet, or the browser window is in the background, the flash steps down it's CPU usage(maybe even go to sleep).
These two mechanisms would make it almost bearable. Long live HTML5.
If it manage to wipe those futile colorful bouncing Flash things out of my screen. Their ability to hog my CPU is as big as their webdesigner's ego.
But I'll stay on Linux (which is also not friend of Adobe).
Jobs just wants people to buy videos through his iTunes store and not view stuff for free... Apple is just as money grubbing as Microsoft is but worst in the sense that you can't even choose your hardware platform your stuck with sub-standard hardware made by fly-by-night companies that have horrid quality control.
PS: I'm not an MS lover actually I hate both but at least with MS I can choose the hardware I want... anyway other then games I don't use windows for anything else... I run a VM with linux of my choice to do all other computer chpperry things. My windows install only has steam installed and that is it... all word processing, spreadshit and graphics/video stuff is all done from linux and not windows. All other non-gaming systems (I only have one gaming system and 4 other systems) are base installed with Linux.
The nerve of him telling Adobe that their product is a POS!
I wouldn't buy an Apple computer because they won't include Flash with their products, that's the Apple lock in!
I was looking at an iPhone, but this seals it, I'm waiting for a phone with Win 7 Mobile, a real fricking operating system that I can do what I want with and get what I want!
Screw Apple!
What's that you say....................?
No Flash on Win 7 either?
WTF are talking about you bullshitter?
It's all over the web?
Really?
Hmmmmmmm............, (reads article)
MS pushing Silverlight?
WTF.............?
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/no-flash-on-windows-mobile-7/
Well screw Jobs and Gates and HTML 5 or H.264, whatever they call it, I'll get a Linux powered phone with Flash!
What's that, x264, Open Source is working on a codec too, thinks it's great?
WTF...............?
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9005
What's so good about this H.264 thingy?
http://www.divx.com/en/technologies/h264
Wow....., Thanks Evil Steve, this is the first time I ever learned something on the internet.
Thanks again for the tip on the future Mac laptops!
Core i7 920 you say?
In a Macbook Pro?
How fast is it?
That fast!!!!!
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/123327
Holy Shit, that's pretty fast!
Thanks again Evil Steve, you're tops!
Flash is truly a horrible! It is not updated regularly and performance is lost for every new feature added! Only a 'Flash' accelerator product either in the form of GPU acceleration or integrated on the CPU die can save it!
In this sense, 10.1 is the first step in the right direction though it requires specific GPUs to work and only suitable for H.264 videos (so HTML5 can erase this advantage). Interestingly, devices based upon nVidia's Tegra/Tegra 2 platform support Flash acceleration!
When every company comes up with hardware for accelerating its software (2d & 3d gaming/graphics, sound, physics, LAN, java, video, etc...)Adobe should come up with a low power accelerator chip for vector graphics processing!
'Member Rag on Dolby, How in 1959 read article, where ALL theDras Work Starts From, GOD Knows what People Are Missing By Being Numb, Using well equiped Lab, made Theory into practical Noise seperation Real. Double DD Is ME. Well by time Goof Balls whom had Constant survielence of LAB Caught on to FREE Aspect, came up with something Our LAB didn't do, Adobe pdf.
After Securing complex submisson that knew nothing of software ,let alone pdf, Took to Highway to Block ALL media could find in Public, Mainframe/Terminal World.
pdf isn't from Adobe, its' OLDER, according to coworkers at CONTROL DATA, Media was Aleady living room, Televised item, thru Studio Specially Built Mainframes.
Adobe just profiteer & ner 'd well. Grabing Open Public software & craming Adobes' carlsbourgh Hate AT US. Not Short Lived ethier, as most carls stuff.
Public be fool. now as 32 bit starts to close adobe starts to close. GOOD RIDDENCE. $800 & downloadable program that don't even give secured file format to send & recieve. Pdf is worhtless actually. Media Blitzkrieg Is just That. An Atttack of Proprietary Knowledge into War.
BAD Mouth Adobe As Theres NO Value in That Company At ALL. Cheap, Beggers is Truth. Adobe is ONE office on Second floor Company & Shucks US for Billions. Something ub nvr getting taste of.
Peepers Worry & Adobe Exploits Fear of Flying. Rag Could go on & on. Its public choice. Adobe is gestopo of enforced crippling of O/S to Sell Quasi Ware. Stolen quasi wear at that.
CRIMINALS IS ACTUAL TERM.
STeWie KILL BOzO, REiNVENT SeLF.
This is what I suspected is the sole reason Apple does not want Flash to their mobile gadgets.
They are afraid because it would show bad frame rates and crawling browsing experience to the users of Iphone and Ipad, on certain sites. And user experience is (what I've heard) is supposedly their top most priority.
Though this is silly reason, sure by removing Flash, they pretty much eliminate the biggest resource hog, but that is idiotic reason. Why not enable Flash block by default, or similar system?
I'm certainly not buying an IPAD (no keyboard does it for me, I need one for business). I do think it has the potential to be an incredible recreational surfing machine though.
In any case, if this helps kill flash, I won't weep any tears for that bloated monstrosity. It certainly doesn't do my netbook any favours...
+1
I am a Flash developer and C# .NET developer and Flash is by far an easier platform to write quick interactive content for, but unfortunately, its much harder to make it cpu and memory efficient. And its much easier for noob programmers to get into because they can bang stuff out that just works and satisfies their customer requirements. But with enough skill and patience, you can easily create entire flash frameworks and supported content that runs beautifully even on some of the slowest hardware. Today's processors, even mobile processors, have no trouble with the actionscript and the flash runtime. its the bulk of crappy flash developers, and their are many, that kill flash.
I just hope he doesn't do the Daniel Jackson thing; ascend to a higher level and then come back to haunt us.
Three huge elephants in the room.
Just get these proprietary roadblocks off the internet and your computer will accelerate down the information highway in a manner that will surprise you.
Flash is used by over 2 million professionals and reaching 99% of Internet-enabled desktops (Millward Brown survey, conducted December 2009)
Its hard to find a site that is not using flash somewhere. Its part of the internet, its not going away.
So what if some poorly designed flash apps eat up your CPU, I would rather deal with it than miss out on some things that are worth seeing.
As for those complaining they cant play Farmville... seriously? seriously? Go outside right now! You might be suffering from a vitamin D deficiency!
Flash is, like many other programming languages, wholly dependant on who is writing the software. I've seen programs written in flash that boggle the mind and run smoothly on a netbook, and I've seen badly written flash programs that make my gaming desktop choke.
Jobs thinking that he can nix the well established and extremely proliferated flash standard because it doesn't play well with his toys is more akin to a five year old throwing a hissy fit than the CEO of a major computing company.
Its funny how anti-mackers love to pin every apple decision on Job's ego. When will they learn platforms are not teams. This is not a football game. Jobs desn't want to control anything but the users experience. Me and my business have been well served by Steve Jobs for the last thirty years. The only time we strayed from Apple was when Jobs was sent out into the cold, only to return and change the world...again.
I think I can completely do without flash. After all, performance issues aside, 90% of the flash content I see on the web is crappy pop-up advertisements that cover up the real content I'm wanting to read.
Which, along with the terrible performance, is why I installed a flash blocker. So, if Flash went missing I can't say I'd shed any tears...
What happen to reporters that reported news without their own cute bias this guy should be writing fortune cookie quotes what a loser
Weird, I keep reading about Flash crashing computers and my outdated AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2500+ box with 2G of ram running Ubuntu handles flash just fine. No crashes here, ever. Also, I own a Macbook now. MicroCenter in my area was selling them for $799 so I bought one. They are very, very nice machines. The ipad is just something I don't want or feel like I need for any reason so I just don't care what it does or does not do, but, after using my Macbook for that past two weeks I can tell you it's pretty easy to get hooked on Apple's stuff...it works, and it works well.
Jobs is doing the world a favor. HTML 5/H.264 is a standards-based way to do the interactive things that Flash, Silverlight, Gears, SproutCore and others do. If HTML5 doesn't take root, then the web risks splintering off into proprietary camps and it simply won't work as well. Apple's strategy for interactivity and media on the IS HTML5/H.264. Sure Apple pays a price for fighting this fight and so do its users, but there's a price for letting Adobe go unchallenged.
Had it occurred to anyone that there is nothing inherently slow in Flash itself, but that the people who write these Flash apps are completely incompetent? I don't blame Windows when a game crashes, I blame the moron developers behind the game. Why is Flash being treated any differently? I've worked with it professionally for some time, and I assure you that there is nothing prohibitively slow about it. Perhaps its only fault is that it's too easy to learn, and thus a larger quantity of idiots end up working with it.
Flash can be efficient, depending on what it needs to do and how the Actionscript behind the scenes has been written.
A similar analogy to Flash being slow is like saying "C is slow" as I can write a program in C that uses all the CPU cycles of a 3Ghz P4.
The ipad battery life claim may not be all that wrong, after all the cpu has x264 decoding on die, which means it should be able to play that using just 100(s) of mW. Flash will eat all cpu cycles you throw at it and still be sluggish, its hardly a stretch the apple cpu would be consuming near its maximum which Id guess at 1 or 2W.
As for saying no to flash; I believe in choice and would prefer to see consumers chose, but since they can chose not to buy apple products, Im okay with that :).
Meanwhile I hope apple is helping killing flash, because its not only a drag on their platform, its the same problem on windows and linux. On windows its a giant security hole and on linux an installation nightmare more often than not (and with poor performance either way).
Funny article, but you go a very very long way to be very very wrong. The Almighty Steve is so royally Correct... You should have saved this righteous ammo for a time when he was at least possibly wrong... Flash sucks and must die. Actually we can say Flash sucked and Steve did a mercy killing. Past tense. It's over. The Almighty Steve has spoken, he who makes or breaks giants with the slightest questioning quiver of an eyebrow. Lift his royal eyebrow did he this time. And how.
seriously it is a resource hog, witha quad cpu and 4gb of ram, farmville can bring my computer to a halt. how the hell that will play on a mobile boggles the mind!
Anti-Apple people keep asking... why doesn't the iPhone support Adobe's proprietary Flash.
The question people should be asking is... why doesn't Microsoft's Windows Mobile (or is it Classic Series 7 Phone?) support HTML-5, which gives similar functionality.
We'd be better off buying handsets that support HTML-5, rather than Flash. Let the web be free!
OSX will not see any real changes until Jobs is out of the picture. When he ascends to a higher plane of existence, then those left behind will be able to make OSX more practical as an OS.
I've said many times in the past that Apple is it's own worse enemy. If Jobs would drop all this control freak crap then Apple would be in a far better position than it is today.
The sad truth is Apple only wants to milk it's user base for every cent it can. Apple fanbots can say whatever they want about M$, but Apple is far worse in how it wants to pick the pockets of it's user base.
Oh, but wait..the Apple tax is actually a TITHE!
I'm not an owner of anything apple, but the fact that my optimized to heck old 2.2 Ghz P4 Laptop struggles with all things flash, and that my wife's new core 2 based laptop kicks all fans into overdrive while "Farmville" or any other flash game is sitting paused and idle speaks volumes to the "efficiency" of the flash platform. Personally, I think it's a great technology with a grossly inefficient implementation and resource requirements considering what it does.