Flash and Mac do I need to worry?

[RedCherry]

I am designing a new AVS site, and we plan on having a flash movie on the tour. The site is not flash, so everything else is jpg.

I had heard at one time Mac's had issues seeing flash, but one place I searched said that isn't so much of a problem. Before Jim spends hours compiling a flash movie, I figured I'd ask.

[Simon]

The Mac computer platform has no problem at all playing Flash movies.

It's only the Apple mobile devices that don't support Flash, so iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad won't see the Flash movie unless the user has installed some app which allows Flash to play on that device.

But if you do what YouTube does, and encode the video as H.264, then it'll play with no problem on those mobile devices, just like there's no problem playing YouTube videos on them.

In case you need it...
How to encode H.264 video



.

[Cleo]

Flash is slowly dying.

Macs are no longer shipping with Flash installed but the user can download and install it.

Like Simon said encode your video as a MP4 and embed this in a Flash player. Like I did on this page. On that page I provided a link to the mp4 file but there is also a way to have it automatically serve the mp4 video to non Flash devices as explained on this page. I haven't done it this way yet but probably will next time I do an update.

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by Cleo

Flash is slowly dying.....Macs are no longer shipping with Flash.

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.

[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.

[cd34]

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.

I removed Flash months ago - it only exists in Chrome for me. My CPU fan on the macbook rarely comes on anymore, battery life substantially improved. When Chrome has problems, 99% of the time it is from Flash crashing. Flash on Android phones does nothing but burn battery. Flash can't die quick enough. I can typically get 30 hours out of a charge on my phone - even surfing sites. If I surf Flash heavy sites, I'm lucky to get 15 hours. Except for one app I'm beta testing, the only app to crash on my phone has been the browser - while viewing a site with Flash.

HTML5 solves almost every problem that Flash addressed - except for the unnecessary glitz that it provided with page transitions, animated buttons, etc.

The only valid thing flash did was handle video - and HTML5 fixes that. Flash also doesn't deal with openGL and video card acceleration - HTML5 does.

Adobe needs to fix a lot of things for Flash to remain relevant. I believe your prediction should be that Flash is slowly dying.

[Ms Naughty]

I'm so glad I read this thread. Feeling confused, I've now educated myself a bit more about videos and html5. I'm a long way behind with my technical knowledge.

This is a great explanation:
http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/05/emb...s-using-html5/

[bDok]

Originally Posted by cd34

I removed Flash months ago - it only exists in Chrome for me. My CPU fan on the macbook rarely comes on anymore, battery life substantially improved. When Chrome has problems, 99% of the time it is from Flash crashing. Flash on Android phones does nothing but burn battery. Flash can't die quick enough. I can typically get 30 hours out of a charge on my phone - even surfing sites. If I surf Flash heavy sites, I'm lucky to get 15 hours. Except for one app I'm beta testing, the only app to crash on my phone has been the browser - while viewing a site with Flash.

HTML5 solves almost every problem that Flash addressed - except for the unnecessary glitz that it provided with page transitions, animated buttons, etc.

The only valid thing flash did was handle video - and HTML5 fixes that. Flash also doesn't deal with openGL and video card acceleration - HTML5 does.

Adobe needs to fix a lot of things for Flash to remain relevant. I believe your prediction should be that Flash is slowly dying.

You said it way better than I could have.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by grandmascrotum

This is a great explanation:
http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/05/emb...s-using-html5/

Nice, going to try using that code on some tours and then maybe in the member's areas of some paysites.

[RedCherry]

Well I ended up going with embedding a wmv movie. Then it was denied, because of the way I embedded it, it was asking for active X in IE. Sooo I just put <embed scr="movie.wmv"> tag basically, and waiting to see if that is ok.

First time I've tried doing an intro movie and its been a big issue.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by RedCherry

Well I ended up going with embedding a wmv movie. Then it was denied, because of the way I embedded it, it was asking for active X in IE. Sooo I just put <embed scr="movie.wmv"> tag basically, and waiting to see if that is ok.

First time I've tried doing an intro movie and its been a big issue.

Not sure if it matters to you but that isn't going to work with Apple mobile devices.

[Cleo]

Now that I'm back home on my Mac what's the url of the tour?

[GigglesWorld]

Flash'll run fine on a Mac, so I wouldn't be too worried about it. That said, Flash is going to die if it doesn't start utilizing the GPU.

[RedCherry]

Well, that embed did not work on IE it flagged the activeX controls, so I went back to a flash embed, with a clickable link to the wmv version of the movie, and finally got it okd.

I don't know how it will do on mac, but it plays on opera, IE and Chrome in windows. (don't have fire fox to check) right now, I'm not too worried about mobile, but I will probably do a mobile version of the one page tour and give that as an option in the future. (I can at least do that on my own domain, not sure on ae hosted sites).

Site is http://mostextreme3d.com/ and it is on adult-empire.com http://sites.adult-empire.com/9164/ in case any one wants to promote it.

It is the most, well, extreme site we have ever done and its converting at 1/16 right now since we put it live less than 24 hours ago.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by RedCherry

Site is http://mostextreme3d.com/ and it is on adult-empire.com http://sites.adult-empire.com/9164/

Movie plays fine on my Mac in Safari. It's too bad that you don't have a link to a MP4 file instead of or in addition to the wmv as that would play on Apple mobile devices.

[RedCherry]

Originally Posted by Cleo

Movie plays fine on my Mac in Safari. It's too bad that you don't have a link to a MP4 file instead of or in addition to the wmv as that would play on Apple mobile devices.

I will, I just need to have Jim render me one, I'll get one up later today, he is still sleeping. I didn't see the part about MP4 until this morning. I'll also have him render the clips inside as MP4 also, and have links to those in the members area. The animations are very short, longest is like 2.5 minutes. Hopefully, he will get longer ones in the future, they just take a long time to create.

[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.

[tickler]

Just a thought but couldn't you use CSS/JS/PHP to build the page appropiate for the device???

[RedCherry]

Originally Posted by tickler

Just a thought but couldn't you use CSS/JS/PHP to build the page appropiate for the device???

I probably can on my domain, but I don't think adult-empire allows some of the scripting on theirs as the sites are all hosted by them.

I ended up with a flash movie, and links that they can view/download wmv and mp4.

And I agree ecchi, flash is buggy as shit and usually if I have a crash, it is because of flash. But then again, there are so many sites with it, I really want it to work because some of the coolest stuff is in flash.

[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?

[cd34]

As google releases a product to do this:

http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/...-to-html5.html

Originally Posted by Google

Swiffy converts Flash SWF files to HTML5, allowing you to reuse Flash content on devices without a Flash player (such as iPhones and iPads).

Swiffy currently supports a subset of SWF 8 and ActionScript 2.0, and the output works in all Webkit browsers such as Chrome and Mobile Safari. If possible, exporting your Flash animation as a SWF 5 file might give better results.

[mike1k]

being educated everyday

[peace]

never worry about anything. We are blessed to play with all what we got.

[ecchi]

I saw an advert on TV the other day, it was either for an Android Tablet or Galaxy, I forget which. It was listing the reasons that it was best. Second from the top was that it could play Flash. So the competition are already jumping on this "weakness" in the iPad.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by ecchi

I saw an advert on TV the other day, it was either for an Android Tablet or Galaxy, I forget which. It was listing the reasons that it was best. Second from the top was that it could play Flash. So the competition are already jumping on this "weakness" in the iPad.

Desperation in advertising...

People don’t want fake iPads, they want real Apple iPads; HP slashes TouchPad dud by 20%

“People don’t have tablet fever; it seems they simply have a mania for iPads,” Ian Sherr reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“The latest evidence: Hewlett-Packard Co. is dropping the price of its TouchPad tablet by 20% little more than a month after it hit stores, as the computer giant tries to goose sales of its answer to Apple Inc.’s iPad,” Sherr reports. “Rivals have been routed so far. Motorola cut the price of its Xoom tablet after its February launch, released a cheaper model and warned shipments will decline this quarter. RIM’s PlayBook was delayed until April and still isn’t being offered for sale by the two biggest U.S. wireless carriers. Samsung Electronics Co., which was the quickest to market an iPad rival and has shipped millions of tablets based on Google Inc.’s Android software, is now embroiled in a patent dispute with Apple that threatens sales…”

Sherr reports, “One sign of Apple’s dominance: Rivals discuss how many tablets they are shipping, but don’t disclose how many units are actually being purchased by customers… As some industry watchers put it: There are more iPads rival tablets sitting in warehouses and stores than current demand for those products, and that’s prompting manufacturers to cut prices to move inventory… Analysts say H-P is now conceding the obvious: consumers won’t pay the same price for an imitator, even a well-appointed one, as they will for the original. That has left the market for tablets split in two. ‘There’s an iPad market,’ said Tim Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, ‘and then there’s everyone else.’”