Flash and Mac do I need to worry?

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by ecchi

Actually, given the popularity of Flash, I'd say that unless Apple do a fast U turn on this, the result will be that that Macs are slowly dying.

It comes down to a pissing war with Adobe and Apple.

Back when Apple really was dying Adobe cut Mac support way back. Flash on Macs was really slow and lacked features that the Windows version had like support for hardware acceleration.

Flash on Macs still isn't great. Apple says that Adobe's programers are lazy and Adobe says that Apple won't give them low level system access.

So it isn't that Apple is trying to kill Flash it's that Adobe won't write decent Mac support of Flash.

All this while HTML5 is maturing and does what Flash does only better.

Hype is a new program does Flash style animations using HTML5 and I'm noticing that more and more websites are using HTML5 for video streaming.

As far as Flash on mobile devices I've played around with a few Android phones that had Flash support and it really sucks for anything beyond watching videos to the point of being pretty much unusable.

So it isn't Apple killing Flash it's Adobe killing Flash.

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by Cleo

It comes down to a pissing war with Adobe and Apple.

The reason is irrelevant, the fact is that a lot of people use Flash on their sites, and surfers expect Flash to work on their computers/mobiles. If it does not, or if they have to download more software to see it, they will think "This computer/device is crap, I wish I had bought Windows/Android." And when their friends are buying new equipment and ask for their advice they will reply "Don't make the mistake I made - Apple is shit."

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Flash, it is too bulky and (unless they have changed it recently) open ended. It crashes browsers and (again, unless they have changed it recently) has no protection against third rate programmers doing something stupid that will overload a processor. But people like it, people use it, and people will vote with their feet if Apple does not change it's ways.

Originally Posted by Cleo

So it isn't Apple killing Flash it's Adobe killing Flash.

I don't think either is killing Flash, but Apple is killing Apple to spite Adobe. Stupid, childish, and petty. Bad news for their shareholders and for people like you who love their Mac.

[cd34]

Originally Posted by ecchi

I don't think either is killing Flash, but Apple is killing Apple to spite Adobe. Stupid, childish, and petty. Bad news for their shareholders and for people like you who love their Mac.

Most of the real security holes on Mac have been through Flash. Most of the performance and crash issues in the browser came from Flash. Apple stopped bundling Flash in their updates and told users that if they wanted to use Flash, they can install it themselves - just like they have had to do with Windows for years. Apple hasn't prevented Adobe from installing their product on Apple Computers - they just stopped bundling it within their system updates. When you install a fresh copy of Windows, Flash isn't on that machine. You're required to make the decision to install Flash on Windows. Microsoft does not include Flash in their patch Tuesday updates, it is the user's responsibility to keep flash up to date, and, I'd bet that most don't.

Apple's resistance and putting Flash on a mobile platform was due to battery life. When Adobe wanted to be on the IPhone, Apple said, show us one mobile platform that you're on. Meego? RIM? Symbian? T4? PalmOS? Adobe had no mobile experience, Flash games on phones don't have the required hooks for touchscreens since they are looking for a mouse position, not a finger gesture. Adobe had no experience with touchscreen applications, and, everyone that has written Flash games that do work on some Android phones, has commented that gameplay on those Flash apps is horrible. The other technical reason Apple didn't want Flash on their phones was due to security issues (Flash has escaped the sandbox on Android) and power consumption.

My old Nokia could go 7 days between charges - my current smartphone (since gingerbread) still needs to be plugged in every night. With conservative use I can get 30 hours out of it, but, usually when I get done with my 20 hour day, the battery is at 15%-30%. I know someone with an IPhone that recharges every other day. Since my phone is my lifeline, every car has a charger, I carry a battery with me at all times and my nightstand and desk at the office both have chargers. If I use sites that have flash, and I am conscious of that when I see it and will close the browser if I see flash, I'm replacing by battery after 12-15 hours. Regrettably, Flash is a system component and to remove it, I need to root my phone.

As for the Apple shareholders being mad, the overall computer desktop and notebook marketplace had a 1.7% drop in the last two quarters, Apple's desktop and notebook computers grew 4.9% during that same time period. Apple stocks are up 3% and Microsoft is down 9.5% in the last 6 months. Look at the one year or five year stock performance and I think we can say Apple is indeed looking out for its shareholders. If you want, compare AAPL to Dell or HP or another manufacturer - I think you can agree that none of those other companies have their shareholder's interest taken care of as well as Apple.

Right now, I have finance.google.com open to look at AAPL versus MSFT - and my CPU fan is running, just to display a single, static chart of two stock symbols. Yes, finance.google uses Flash to display their charts. Google Music also uses Flash, but, that doesn't seem to affect the CPU fan on my machine much.

If Flash is indeed that spectacular, Microsoft wouldn't have have invented Silverlight. Microsoft has used Flash for years on their sites to provide glitz for their sites. It was the one technology that Microsoft never even thought about rewriting. Some inside the inner circles commented about how Adobe appeared to have some spell over Microsoft that they were the only company that Microsoft hadn't come after - for PDF, Flash and Photoshop.

How about Flash on Windows Mobile 7? Oh, that's right, Microsoft declined it - due to battery and performance issues.

So, if you're designing a site and you really are concerned with the mobile market, you're going to use CSS3 and HTML5 because there is more HTML5 support on mobile than there is Flash support. Personally, I don't know how Google was strongarmed into putting Flash on their phones. Oh, and since it is included in the root bundle, when there is a security fix for Flash, how does one get an update? oh, we wait for months until the phone vendor releases a fix - meaning Flash on Android gets to enjoy those security holes for years - if the updates are ever pushed. What version of Flash are you running on your Android phone? Does it have any security notes?