Honestly, I don't think Joe Blow will even know that lack of Flash support is anything they care about until after they've bought an iPad and can't see stuff they were expecting to.
I honestly think that by the time the iPad comes out, every major site that uses Flash will have created an HTML5 version that works on the iPad and nobody will know the difference.
Netflix's Reed Hastings says he has no plans right now to create an app for watching streaming video on the iPad or any mobile device. Maybe he will change his mind, but there's a major site that won't be jumping on the bandwagon anytime soon.
I'm sure many sites will make a transition eventually, but I doubt they can do it so quickly and work out all the bugs. I've tried the YouTube HTML 5 video player using Chrome and the video looks pretty bad. Nowhere as good as even standard def video using Flashplayer. Though it was probably smart of Apple to preannounce and get folks thinking about this.
I agree with Swifty that most people will know or care about Flash prior buying an iPad. It's when they can't access/see what they are used to seeing that they're going to get confused and wonder why or what's wrong.
Quote I honestly think that by the time the iPad comes out, every major site that uses Flash will have created an HTML5 version that works on the iPad and nobody will know the difference.
The codec royalty issue with h.264 video, the lack of DRM support, Flash's dominance in web games, and the potential implications for revenue models based on interactive web ads seem to be major hold ups.
So, yes, little chance hulu, Netflix, and others will jump in as quickly as some might like. Mozilla opposes h.264 in principle (not open source and poses risk of being held hostage by patent owners).
People like blood sausage. People will buy anything.
This will sell a lot. I think Jobs has finally got some muscle to direct trends and the market, and Flash will be the textbook example of how it's done. Flash is great for some things, but for simple video/slide show viewing it could be a lot better. While the beef between Apple and Adobe at the moment seem highly political or money-driven, it's a reflection of a real technological conundrum: the Internet is becoming more and more mobile and reliant on battery power; at the same time, online videos and applications are everywhere and highly dependent on Flash, which is a resource hog. Flash will either have to change or die.
All true until the conclusion. Flash doesn't have to change until there's a competitor, no matter how much muscle Jobs puts behind it. For a variety of reasons detailed well in the link I provided above, HTML5 isn't that competitor. At least not for quite a few years to come. It's all well and good for Jobs to push Flash down, but if there's no viable alternative to push up it ultimately won't matter.
I think the market will push for the ways out, and in the meantime there might be a few competing solutions. Once CNN sees that morning train riders are skipping their Flash pages because they won't play on their iPhones and iPads, they'll find an alternative quick. Flash might see lots of competition, but perhaps the competition won't be a specific format, but no format at all; web publishers might just avoid Flash-y delivery for mobile versions of their sites altogether until something good comes along. And something will, I have no doubt.
And I think Apple has a great opportunity to drive this evolving process. They could channel the geniality that brought us the 1984 Mac and the iPhone and push for a format that is efficient, either in-house or by allowing third-party products to run in their iPads/iPhones. They work with hardware manufacturers to create light, reliable, and innovative technology for their products' parts; they could do the same for software.
You should read the article Zenin linked to. Yes, eventually, Flash's role will decline, but it will stick around for awhile. Also, the article points out that despite the many problems with Flash, it still has strengths that come from being in an entrenched position.
Re: the Market. Remember, iPhones are less than 2% of devices accessing the Web. I grant that iPhones have a disproportionate visibility in the culture and perhaps an outsized influence on the industry, but it is still a niche product so far as numbers are concerned. A big and growing niche, but a niche nevertheless.
Commentator on NPR's "Market Place" last night mentioned reason Jobs is ignoring flash, he's waiting for html 5. Someone leaked Jobs rant that flash is old, buggy tech. I know it's reason firefox slows my mac to a crawl.
Doh, posted my link and didn't see your post or Zenin's link. I hope html 5 changes things, my macbook pro slows to a crawl after afew days, and that's without youtube, facebook open. And for now, I watch youtube and hulu on my pc
Flash kills pretty much any browser, even on the PC. Youtube on Firefox hasn't worked WELL for me on any computer, and even under chrome or IE, where it works, it still will pull 100s of MBs of memory over time just being open.
I guess since RAM costs as little as $20/GB, I haven't really noticed FF taking up a few hundred MBs of VM space (not the same as active RAM usage BTW, which is about half on my system).
While I can understand that as an issue on mobile devices currently (the iPhone 3Gs apparently has only 256MB of ram), it's really nothing on a real computer.
Well it's not just RAM but CPU utilization. Flash is a hog. Adobe Flashplayer 10.1 will help a bit, since it will support offloading of some of the work to many graphics processors. Right now Flash runs entirely through the CPU.
Not entirely correct. Flash has had optional hardware acceleration support for ages, at least on PCs (and really, what else is there? ;-). What 10.1 seems to be doing from what I read is extending hardware acceleration to mobile devices.
I think we both may be right. I believe the new GPU acceleration is specifically for web videos (and h.264 in particular), which I don't think has existed before.
And yes, a big part of this is also to make Flash work on mobiles.
It's a mac thing dude. Wife and I both have a brand new macbook pros, and firefox and flah chugs them like crazy. But youtube and hulu, no prob on a pc. It's freaky, yeah.
Flash doesn't seem to do so well on Macs, that's true. But also someone was telling me the other day that the reason flash video seems to "skip" sometimes on my PC is because I run a lot of tabs and Firefox periodically runs through all of its tabs performing maintenance/updates on them. Recently I've started using Chrome just to watch stuff on Hulu or whatever, and it seems to be better.
Hulu Desktop on Mac is awesome. I can't compare it to running Hulu through a browser since it's been so long, but I'm pretty sure it uses flash, and it is just fine.
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Lounge:
The Kitchen Sink
- 1/27/10 12:28 pm by Wexie
- 2057 views
It should be today. I'm really curious. Here is a leaked video of it. First Apple Tablet Review Get Live Updates HerePage(s): < Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... (209 items total)
catlike
I agree that there is much to be said for simplicity and ease of use. Simplicity is actually hard to design.
However, I still think the lack of flash may become a big deal for Joe Blow.
So, I don't object to apple making limited devices that don't do what power users might want but do a good job of meeting the average person's needs.
I do object when the leave out obvious functions/technologies or try to convince the public that they don't need something they actually do want.
Lack of Flash in iPad is dumb. Leaving out cut and paste for a long time was stupid with the iPhone. Lack of Multitasking is borderline.
Swifty
Honestly, I don't think Joe Blow will even know that lack of Flash support is anything they care about until after they've bought an iPad and can't see stuff they were expecting to.
4^(1/2) = Rainbows
Keither
I honestly think that by the time the iPad comes out, every major site that uses Flash will have created an HTML5 version that works on the iPad and nobody will know the difference.
catlike
Netflix's Reed Hastings says he has no plans right now to create an app for watching streaming video on the iPad or any mobile device. Maybe he will change his mind, but there's a major site that won't be jumping on the bandwagon anytime soon.
I'm sure many sites will make a transition eventually, but I doubt they can do it so quickly and work out all the bugs. I've tried the YouTube HTML 5 video player using Chrome and the video looks pretty bad. Nowhere as good as even standard def video using Flashplayer. Though it was probably smart of Apple to preannounce and get folks thinking about this.
I agree with Swifty that most people will know or care about Flash prior buying an iPad. It's when they can't access/see what they are used to seeing that they're going to get confused and wonder why or what's wrong.
Zenin
catlike
Nice, very thorough discussion.
The codec royalty issue with h.264 video, the lack of DRM support, Flash's dominance in web games, and the potential implications for revenue models based on interactive web ads seem to be major hold ups.
So, yes, little chance hulu, Netflix, and others will jump in as quickly as some might like. Mozilla opposes h.264 in principle (not open source and poses risk of being held hostage by patent owners).
Sloth
People like blood sausage. People will buy anything.
This will sell a lot. I think Jobs has finally got some muscle to direct trends and the market, and Flash will be the textbook example of how it's done. Flash is great for some things, but for simple video/slide show viewing it could be a lot better. While the beef between Apple and Adobe at the moment seem highly political or money-driven, it's a reflection of a real technological conundrum: the Internet is becoming more and more mobile and reliant on battery power; at the same time, online videos and applications are everywhere and highly dependent on Flash, which is a resource hog. Flash will either have to change or die.
Zenin
All true until the conclusion. Flash doesn't have to change until there's a competitor, no matter how much muscle Jobs puts behind it. For a variety of reasons detailed well in the link I provided above, HTML5 isn't that competitor. At least not for quite a few years to come. It's all well and good for Jobs to push Flash down, but if there's no viable alternative to push up it ultimately won't matter.
Sloth
I think the market will push for the ways out, and in the meantime there might be a few competing solutions. Once CNN sees that morning train riders are skipping their Flash pages because they won't play on their iPhones and iPads, they'll find an alternative quick. Flash might see lots of competition, but perhaps the competition won't be a specific format, but no format at all; web publishers might just avoid Flash-y delivery for mobile versions of their sites altogether until something good comes along. And something will, I have no doubt.
And I think Apple has a great opportunity to drive this evolving process. They could channel the geniality that brought us the 1984 Mac and the iPhone and push for a format that is efficient, either in-house or by allowing third-party products to run in their iPads/iPhones. They work with hardware manufacturers to create light, reliable, and innovative technology for their products' parts; they could do the same for software.
catlike
You should read the article Zenin linked to. Yes, eventually, Flash's role will decline, but it will stick around for awhile. Also, the article points out that despite the many problems with Flash, it still has strengths that come from being in an entrenched position.
Re: the Market. Remember, iPhones are less than 2% of devices accessing the Web. I grant that iPhones have a disproportionate visibility in the culture and perhaps an outsized influence on the industry, but it is still a niche product so far as numbers are concerned. A big and growing niche, but a niche nevertheless.
Phlurg
You know what plays flash and has a SD card slot? Windows Mobile (tm) devices. If you think the iPad sucks, get one. I dare you.
Some Guy
that won't be necessary, as we already know that android is getting flash this year.
frankyboy
Commentator on NPR's "Market Place" last night mentioned reason Jobs is ignoring flash, he's waiting for html 5. Someone leaked Jobs rant that flash is old, buggy tech. I know it's reason firefox slows my mac to a crawl.
frankyboy
Doh, posted my link and didn't see your post or Zenin's link. I hope html 5 changes things, my macbook pro slows to a crawl after afew days, and that's without youtube, facebook open. And for now, I watch youtube and hulu on my pc
Keither
Flash kills pretty much any browser, even on the PC. Youtube on Firefox hasn't worked WELL for me on any computer, and even under chrome or IE, where it works, it still will pull 100s of MBs of memory over time just being open.
frankyboy
So what you're saying is that, Flash killed the Video star?
Zenin
I guess since RAM costs as little as $20/GB, I haven't really noticed FF taking up a few hundred MBs of VM space (not the same as active RAM usage BTW, which is about half on my system).
While I can understand that as an issue on mobile devices currently (the iPhone 3Gs apparently has only 256MB of ram), it's really nothing on a real computer.
catlike
Well it's not just RAM but CPU utilization. Flash is a hog. Adobe Flashplayer 10.1 will help a bit, since it will support offloading of some of the work to many graphics processors. Right now Flash runs entirely through the CPU.
Zenin
Not entirely correct. Flash has had optional hardware acceleration support for ages, at least on PCs (and really, what else is there? ;-). What 10.1 seems to be doing from what I read is extending hardware acceleration to mobile devices.
catlike
I think we both may be right. I believe the new GPU acceleration is specifically for web videos (and h.264 in particular), which I don't think has existed before.
And yes, a big part of this is also to make Flash work on mobiles.
frankyboy
No, that dialogue box is there to censure that guy at the piano flipping the bird.
sdswinger
Seriously? How old is your computer if youtube in firefox isn't working well? Works fine for me on both desktop, and laptop...
I may not live there anymore, but my dancing feet will always be from L.A.
Keither
The SLOWEST machine I have is my laptop, which is a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo. The fast machine is a 2.66Ghz Quad-Xeon w/ 8GB of RAM.
sdswinger
hmm...my fastes machine is 1.8...so you must have other issues goin on
I may not live there anymore, but my dancing feet will always be from L.A.
frankyboy
It's a mac thing dude. Wife and I both have a brand new macbook pros, and firefox and flah chugs them like crazy. But youtube and hulu, no prob on a pc. It's freaky, yeah.
Wombat
Flash doesn't seem to do so well on Macs, that's true. But also someone was telling me the other day that the reason flash video seems to "skip" sometimes on my PC is because I run a lot of tabs and Firefox periodically runs through all of its tabs performing maintenance/updates on them. Recently I've started using Chrome just to watch stuff on Hulu or whatever, and it seems to be better.
Shanabanana
Hulu Desktop on Mac is awesome. I can't compare it to running Hulu through a browser since it's been so long, but I'm pretty sure it uses flash, and it is just fine.
frankyboy
Hulu desktop!? Sounds great, I'll try it. Yeah, my wife as been using chrome because of issues with firefox.
Zenin
http://www.hulu.com/labs/hulu-desktop
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