Flash Support Confirmed For Android 2.2 282
farble1670 writes "In an interview with the New York Times, Google's Andy Rubin confirmed that Android 2.2 will have support for Flash 10.1. Quoting: '[Rubin] promised that full support for Adobe’s Flash standard was coming in the next version of Android, code-named Froyo, for frozen yogurt (previous Android releases were called Cupcake, Donut, and Eclair, and are represented outside Building 44 on the Google campus with giant sculptures of the desserts). Sometimes being open "means not being militant about the things consumers are actually enjoying," he said.'"
Adobe vs Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
In the left corner we have Adobe, who demonstrates the power of the web enhanced with cross-platform plugins, but makes little effort to cooperate on forming the albeit openly published Flash VM spec and makes a fairly unstable reference implementation (not helped by the lack of process isolation in browsers).
In the right corner we have Apple, whose proposal of the extra-DOM canvas element to troll Adobe (rather than following the example of SVG) further complicated the monolithic monster that is W3C's HTML standard.
In the centre we have consumers, who get to enjoy that there are so many standards to choose from.
Re:Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF Are You Babbling About? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'll give them credit for sticking to their guns about open standards for the web"
Tell us you're being sarcastic...
No one could possibly be stupid enough to take Steve Jobs' rambling tirades against 'teh Flash' as some sort of effort to support 'open standards'.
Flash allows developers and users to freely bypass Apple's tollbooth for content.
Hey Google (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm thrilled that I'm able to use whatever software I want on Android. The problem is, I don't actually want Flash - I just wanted the ability to decide for myself.
So, that's great that you will be supporting it, but please let me turn it off or uninstall it from my phone.
Thanks.
Choice is good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:5, Insightful)
While I dislike Apple's my-way-or-the-highway approach, I'll give them credit for sticking to their guns about open standards for the web.
The problem I have is while they dress it up as sticking to their guns on open standards, their true motive is they want people to write to the proprietary technology of iPhone apps instead of flash apps. They make legitimate criticisms of Adobe as tying up the web in a proprietary technology while at the same time clearly moving to punish any developers that would want to target iPhone+others using cross-platform tools rather than limited and proprietary iPhone only apps.
I can't get excited over the concept of rooting for either Adobe or Apple in their little pissing contest. I dislike what both want the industry to look like.
Re:Hackers have a new window (Score:4, Insightful)
Yawn. The same mantra was repeated again and again when iPhone was introduced and disallowed you to install native applications while you could do that on Windows Mobile and Symbian. According to Jobs native applications were the tool of devil and could bring down the whole GSM network.
Guess what, there were no hackers to attack both systems then, there are none now. And the GSM networks somehow survived.
My Thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
To be honest I'm rather surprised it's taken this long for Adobe to release a portable version of Flash for smartphones. I think this speaks to how cozy and lazy Adobe had become with their control of the market. Jobs's remarks were indeed hypocritical, but if he is to praised for anything it's for lighting a fire under Adobe's cushion.
I also think Jobs's "letter about Flash" was far from coincidental. Now that his competitors will have a defining feature that makes their smartphone experience significantly more enjoyable, Jobs either had to relent or push on with an self-inflicted platform deficiency. The letter was just him setting down the battle lines.
Competition is great, but Apple's use of their control of the iPhone hardware to control the iPhone software market is anti-competitive, and I for one am happy to see Google stick it to them.
Re:Take that. (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't buy Apple if you wish, but stick a fork in Flash.
I won't deny that Flash is not everything we would want it to be, but Jobs obviously envisions a platform that is patented and locked down to the exclusion of all competitors. At least Flash has the merit of being multi-platform. On that basis alone, Jobs can go get fucked.
Disclaimer: typed on a second-hand MacBook. Some of Apple's ideas and hardware are great, but Steve Jobs is a nasty piece of work, and whoever donated his liver should have been retrospectively aborted.
What about the little guy? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's extremely annoying to see Mr Jobs deny me access to customers based on his idea of perfection.
As a small restaurant/club owner, I spent a lot of time creating a Flash-based website so that it would be more appealing to customers than an HTML site. Is Mr Jobs really suggesting that I should now create an app for my business instead?
Re:thats nice but (Score:1, Insightful)
.. oh, and regarding flash:
Yeah, flash _is_ trash. And I thank Apple for helping us getting rid of flash dependency but as long as it's needed to access all the web I don't wanna be without it.
One man uninstalling flash won't stop websites from using it.
Re:Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:0, Insightful)
It's weak, because the rebuttal talks about H.264 not being open, but Steve Jobs didn't claim it was, he called it an industry standard, not an open standard. The letter from Steve Jobs is actually really clear, it does not state that iPhone OS is open, or that Xcode, the iPhone SDK or the built-in apps are open. It talks about the technologies you can use in Mobile Safari being open (literally HTML5, CSS and JavaScript). He also calls H.264 an industry standard, not an open standard.
Reading the letter as it is, I don't think there is much for the FSF to rebute (is that a word?). Of course there is enough to argue (about the iPhone OS being closed, or H.264 having patents), but as a response to the letter the FSF just brings up new arguments.
Re:What about the little guy? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, let me get this straight: instead of doing the rational thing to maximize the number of users who could benefit from the content of your site by first presenting the content with the most broadly supported subset of HTML before building a "premium" presentation of the content that would be accessible to a smaller set of users using a technology that is less universal like Flash, you excluded many potential customers by building a flash-only site that they could not use from the many web-enabled devices (including the iPhone) that don't have Flash, and you blame Steve Jobs for limiting the reach of your app by not correcting your decision by bringing Flash to the iPhone?
Maybe you need to consider that the problem here isn't with Steve Jobs.
Some of you keep forgetting something... (Score:4, Insightful)
Flash wasn't built for mobile devices.
If you want it to suck cycles on your desktop or most laptops, that's not a problem, for your PC or Mac has them and electrical power to spare, generally.
But Flash sucks the electrical life out of mobile devices. This isn't theory, it's fact. Take your laptop off AC power and see it die after a few YouTube videos or Flash games.
I'm not against Flash. I'm against it on devices that must be reliable and are built with limited processor and electrical power.
Flash is the Web standard of .NET. It's sloppy. It's developer hasn't made great inroads to optimize it or secure it. It is flexible, but some of its features make little sense on a multi-touch screen. And only Adobe makes it.-
If Adobe wants to side with another platform for Flash AND make it work, great. But apparently Apple doesn't want to be Adobe's guinea pig and it has every reason not to.
Apple has already dealt before with competitors both inside and out who change their business plan and as a result, leave Apple twisting in the wind. It's good business practice not to let your business become overly dependent on others. Hell, Adobe was in that situation when Apple began to flounder. So why would Apple emulate Adobe in that regard?
As for Flash on the Android? Let's see it, then. What doesn't kill your phone only makes it stronger.
Perhaps Apple will have Billy Dee Williams in for some endorsements, standing over a person with a locked, overheated phone.
" Problem with your Droid? "
Re:What about the little guy? (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think Flash would be more appealing to people visiting your website? When I go to a restaurant's web site I want to see a menu, the hours of operations, and maybe a picture of some of their entrees.
Re:Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:5, Insightful)
It's weak, because the rebuttal talks about H.264 not being open, but Steve Jobs didn't claim it was, he called it an industry standard, not an open standard.
And Flash isn't an industry standard? When all the industry leaders - and nearly all the industry followers - support it, it seems to me to be a de-facto industry standard.
Re:Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:5, Insightful)
You know .mp3 was made available under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms - at first. Once it was popular the IP owners started putting on the squeeze. At the very beginning .mp3 licenses were pretty much free. Not so any more.
According to Wikipedia, only the IETF and ITU-T refer to their standards as "open standards". Everybody else just calls them standards, even though they all require the reasonable and non-discriminatory terms of these so-called "open" standards, because that's what they are - standards. The only reason they are open is because you have to lay them out when you apply for the patents. Pretty much all definitions of the word "standard" require reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Else they can't be a standard, by definition.
Hey guess who owns the rights to the h.264 standards? Why, it's the ITU-T! This "Open Standard" stuff is just smokescreen to trick the Open Source proponents into feeling like they aren't getting screwed over by these corporations. An "Open Standard" is absolutely no different than any other official industry standard. It's not really that much different than de-facto standards either, their openness and wide-use is what tends to make them standards in the first place.
Re:Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple being douchey about video formats doesn't change the fact that they are fully supporting open web scripting standards.
Re:Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:3, Insightful)
all standards pertaining to the web should be open
Note that qualification in Steve's message. There has been noise about flash as an 'app' platform beyond 'just' web, and that is something Apple has a *lot* to lose on. Longer term, perhaps HTML5/WebGL/CSS/Javascript poses a long-term threat to their 'apps', but Flash represents a more clear and imminent threat.
Apple is in some ways worse than Microsoft (perhaps because Apple is allowed to get away with it) when it comes to standards. It would be wise to keep in mind the motivations of the players as they present their rhetoric to the world.
Re:What about the little guy? (Score:2, Insightful)
using a technology that is less universal like Flash
Flash is available on something like 99% of all computers, and that final percentage is mostly people who are actively avoiding Flash or using browsers that don't support HTML5 in any case.
you blame Steve Jobs for limiting the reach of your app by not correcting your decision by bringing Flash to the iPhone?
Something like 75% of all mobile devices will support Flash. Yeah, it's really his problem that iPhone users are going to be left in the cold.
Steve Jobs needs to wake up and realize that there are just some things that can't be done without Flash. HTML5 is NOT a drop-in solution. In fact, in many ways, it's considerably worse than Flash.
Which means that there's a good chance that his website simply will never be able to work without the features that Flash brings to the table. And in that case, you're basically telling him that yes, he should code a custom iPhone application to get that final percent-of-a-percent of an audience that uses the iPhone to browse the web, since there's no other way to duplicate his existing, fully functional code.
Re:Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a rebuttal from Ars, because they requested that he be a guest writer. The article itself also frames it pretty clearly for you, so there is no need to frame it again.
While he is absolutely on the extreme end of the open source argument (he thinks just the software being open isn't good enough, but that everything supporting that software should be open as well), he nails the hypocrisy of Jobs's letter.
First, despite what the ITU-T calls it, h.264 is not an open standard, there is nothing about them that is different than any other proprietary industrial standard. It has very restrictive licensing terms that are not publicly available. They can and will sue you if they catch you implementing h.264 without paying them for the privilege.
Second, every time Jobs uses "Adobe" in his letter, you can replace it with "Apple", and every time he uses "Flash" you can replace it with "Cocoa" or "iPhone OS" or "App Store". Thy are completely interchangeable in the complaint, so Jobs very plainly is not at all interested in maintaining free and open standards on the web. Apple is no different than Adobe in this regard, they are both struggling for control over their users.
Contrast that with Google, who is saying "Yeah, you can use that if you want, we don't mind, but look here's something even better and it's free!" Obviously event he great Google isn't perfect, but they at least don't share the pot-kettle relationship of Apple and Adobe.
Re:Take that. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WTF Are You Babbling About? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:thats nice but (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Take that. (Score:5, Insightful)
If Apple were actually consistent in which apps are excluded, that would be one thing, but they are not, so it's really hard to gauge what they'll allow one week from the next, especially when they change the language in their TOS.
Anyways, I agree on the efficiency no matter what toolset is used. Let the customer decide if they like or dislike something and crap will always get flushed out. I certainly learned to not trust most content from the App Store as it's battery-hogging-crap, much of which was coded with Objective C.
Re:thats nice but (Score:2, Insightful)
Flash doesn't things you just can't do with the web using any other technology.
That doesn't matter shit for the user, only for the developer.
Either you can view the content or you can't.
Without flash you can't.
Simple as that and rather inconvenient. Shit or not.
Re:Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:4, Insightful)
You can thank apple's open source work on WebKit for a big part of that.
It's worth noting that since it was made open-source, Apple has been more of a hindrance than a help to the development of WebKit, with their constant attempts to force control of it in spite of the community's desires.
You clearly did not read the letter from jobs. He does discuss the proprietary nature of iPhone OS.
Clearly, neither did you. He touts h.264 as an open web standard, which despite what the ITU-T group likes to label it, it is not. At the same time, they are making veiled threats at Ogg Theora, which is an open web standard. That's some great promotion of "openness on the web" there.
Basically, you can exchange "Apple" and "Cocoa" or "App Store" for every single instance of "Adobe" and "Flash" in Jobs's letter. Open standards proponent my ass!
Combined with the performance issues, crashing issues
What crashing and performance issues? I haven't experienced any on my Android. I personally like flash, it would be nice if something less proprietary were better, but it does a lot of things that simply cannot be done in HTML5 (even with h.264), JavaScript, and CSS. Adobe will fix any touch issues eventually, they have a very strong incentive to make it work well, so that's really only a "for now" issue. HTML5+h.264 isn't even widely adopted yet, so how is that any different than the "touch" issue for Flash?
Saying we should be using h.264 instead of Flash because Flash isn't an open standard is like saying we should buy Lamborghini's instead of Ferrari's because Ferrari's are too expensive. Lamborghini's are just as expensive for all the same reasons as Ferrari's. It doesn't wash.
Re:My Thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
The Maemo plugin is a sluggish performer from what I've heard too. Adobe really needs to hit the Flash 10.1 for Android release out of the park, or risk validating all of Jobs' criticisms.
Re:WTF Are You Babbling About? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find particularly ironic about this thread is that Android's browser uses Webkit. That's right, the open phone that's the enemy of Apple's uber-evil closed system is running a fork of khtml created and supported by Apple. Without Apple, Android probably wouldn't be as good. It just goes to show, somebody modded +5 on slashdot doesn't need to actually need to know anything about technology, they just need to be able to denigrate whatever technology company is currently the market leader.
You can make that connection if you like, but as you said, it's a khtml fork. It's silly to speculate about what Android would be without Apple's support of Webkit, as Google could have done lots of things for their browser engine, including supporting and developing a khtml fork.
Re:What about the little guy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Something like 75% of all mobile devices will support Flash.
But not today. And his flash monstrosity designed for 1024x768 won't be very appealing on a 320x480, 4" touch screen.
Re:Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:3, Insightful)
And HTML5 pretty much loses unless we're talking relatively sedentary content. That's not a slight on HTML5, it's just not built for timing critical stuff such as animation. I expect performance is all over the shop too from one browser to the next rather than the consistency Flash brings. Where it can hope to claw share from Flash is on the rich client side of things, but I expect games / anims are probably safe for a long time yet.