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.'"
Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope it doesn't turn out that Flash is the x86 code of the Internet age.
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. This will be interesting to see what happens with Flash, given the growing gap between devices that support it and those that don't.
Re:Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps you should realize that your definition of 'open standard' isn't one that anyone outside of the OSS community subscribes to.
It is available to anyone to implement anyway they care to without any discrimination in who gets to buy it for what purpose.
You can fully examine the standard.
Just because it costs money does not mean it isn't open.
OSS people have just gotten retarded and confuse 'open' and 'free' as if they are interchangable, and then have several different definitions of free that are used
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You have a terrible misspelling of Qualcomm there.
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.
H.264 badgers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Flash is a closed standard. But even if it was and open standard, H.264 would still beat it quite handily in video quality and file size (bandwidth).
Would a vector animation like Badgers [badgerbadgerbadger.com] really be smaller as H.264? The closest contender here involves scripting a <canvas>.
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Explain to me how vector animation is video. What percentage of users are downloading vector animations? Were vector animations even discussed for HTML5?
You have helped make my point. The discussion is concerning which wrapper or delivery method for video HTML5 should employ. It is irrellivant to say "Flash does vector animations, but H.264 does not," because vector animations aren't video.
But I'll bet my shorts there's a better vector animation solution out there...one that is purposed soley for deliver
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What percentage of users are downloading vector animations?
Every single Homestar Runner fan. Every single Weebl and Bob fan. Every single visitor to Newgrounds.
It is irrellivant to say "Flash does vector animations, but H.264 does not," because vector animations aren't video.
Other Slashdot users disagree with you. They seem to think that one should create a vector animation and then render it to video before publishing it. But I know that's horribly bandwidth-inefficient.
Using Flash, a whole platform, for video, or vector animations, is akin to buying a car just so you can listen to the radio.
Then what just-a-radio technology do you recommend for delivering vector animations with synchronized sound? Consider that before ActionScript matured and Flash added FLV, Flash was primarily a vehicle for vecto
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Flash is partially open - Adobe has provided the .swf spec [adobe.com] for everything but the proprietary video codecs, which are not technically "Flash."
interesting, but doesn't help Adobe's position.
See above - video codecs are not the same thing as Flash. This is essentially the same situation as QuickTime being an "open" standard supporting closed codecs.
I understand its not a codec, and in fact Flash can deliver H.264 video, but your point is irrelevant as Flash and H.264 are competing as video delivery methods for the spot in HTML5 (H.264 already won, btw). So it is understood we are comparing Flash (not a codec), to H.264 (a video codec) in regards to what their function is in this case: web video delivery. Flash CAN duplicate exactly the quality of H.264 because it can deliver H.264... but it will necessa
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However, some people confuse 'open' with 'free'. The h.264 is covered by certain patents, the owners of which have joined together into a patent pool and have decided on charging for use of h.264 in certain specific circumstances.
I'm confused about what makes the ITU-T's standards open in the first place, they are absolutely no different than any other official standard in any other industry. Even de-facto standards tend to have the same aspects as these "open" standards.
It's like if the Open Source community just called themselves the Software Community, and some guy came along and had the bright idea to say "Yeah, that stuff's great, but you should use my software because it's 'open'." Everybody else's software in the community
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For follow up, and because the licensing terms are not publicly available, here is the FSF's collection of information about the h.264 patent license:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/h264-patent-license [fsf.org]
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.
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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.
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That wasn't a rebuttal from ars, it was written by the operations manager of the Free Software Foundation. It helps to frame it properly, since that guy has a definite desire to see a proprietary platform like iPhone fail.
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.
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I recommend you read arstechnica's rebuttal of Steve Jobs's claims.
I want my five minutes back. This editorial is terrible. Jobs made a distinction between proprietary standards for content on the web and proprietary tools to access that content. This editorial completely glosses over that distinction and argues that all proprietary software is bad. Seriously? I'm all for touting the benefits of open source and free software but there's a place for proprietary software as well. If you don't like the iphone's proprietary software, buy another phone. It's not like there ar
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)
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.
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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 the
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
You probably complained about that.
Way to presuppose something about my stance that conveniently demonizes me.
I really didn't have much to say on the matter. When it released, I tried it out, thought it was a harbinger of good things to come, but it lacked some features that made me wait until a less button-averse set of manufacturers really got into the game. I actually had to wait longer than I thought before I got a WebOS device that pretty much fit my requirements, which is a testament of how far ahead of the game Apple was in technolo
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I hope it doesn't turn out that Flash is the x86 code of the Internet age.
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. This will be interesting to see what happens with Flash, given the growing gap between devices that support it and those that don't.
Sure looks like it, and as far as im concerned, its a good thing, long over due. It promoted sloppy bloated webpages that slow every computer i have.. Its insecure.. I could go on and on..
AND as sites like Youtube and Facebook moves away from it, there really is no point in seeing it surviving. This is 2010.. We can do better.
Now, if we can get something done with PDF and clean it up...
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Come back in a few weeks (months?) when Android 2.2 with Flash 10.1 is in the wild -- and note how much it really, really sucks on a mobile device. Heck, I'd even venture to wager a monetary quantity (100,000 quatloos) on the amount of Flash on mobile device suckage (100%).
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Underpowered? Yep, and thats the point. Underpowered enough to have great battery life and be useable all day, while still being powerful enough to do what people need. Requiring some general purpose power hungry x86 chip to run Flash well is a bad idea for a cell phone or small tablet. Instead, they use low power ARM chips and hardware decoders.
I guess that also means the Nexus One, and every other Android phone is underpowered. Along with every Blackberry, Palm, and other mobile device. Can't wait f
Re:Maybe good... maybe bad (Score:4, Interesting)
And I still find it funny that the whole "open" Android crowd is cheering that they get a closed plugin.
An open platform means anyone can develop for it, even proprietary software. Contrast it to Apple's closed platform, where you can't get that closed plugin because Steve has a chip on his shoulder. There are open source Flash players that could, theoretically, be ported to Android just as Adobe is doing (if anyone felt strongly enough about "closed plugins" that they were willing to port an open one). Again, that's something Steve won't let you do on the iPhone.
Also, most Android phones already ship with closed applications from Google. That's what the scuffle with Cyanogen was about, which is why installing CyanogenMod now involves backing up those closed apps and then restoring them after flashing the new OS.
Enjoying? (Score:3, Funny)
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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.
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.
You can already disable Flash on Android 1.5.... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
I'm not sure why this keeps coming up, since nobody that ever replies clearly has ever owned an Android phone. My HTC Hero, which supports Flash 7 out-of-the-box, has an option in its browser to disable plugins.
You have the option to disable Flash on your Android phone right now, and it's FUD to keep suggesting that you won't be able to disable it again in the future.
Re: (Score:2)
Why haven't you just uninstalled flash on it? Also, why is it taking anything more than flashblock?
Choice is good (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one... (Score:2, Informative)
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.
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Not only has Flash been available on other smartphones (Windows Mobile, N900, etc.) but it's also been available on Android phones with the HTC Sense UI. Now it'll be in every stock 2.2 phone, which will cover hopefully all newer Android-running phones (aka ones running 2.1 now)
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.
So sad (Score:2)
This was my comment on the previous /. story about Flash not going to be supported under iPhone, moded 'Troll' as you see. [slashdot.org] My current comment is the exact opposite of that one.
This is a disaster! Flash must be made into a pariah or maybe just a piranha of the Internet. It became a de-facto standard for playing video in a browser and supplanted development of an open standard, which was so late to arrive obviously, it only has appeared in html5. It is insane, if the rest of the Internet was based on simi
How about websockets? (Score:2)
When will they start putting the current webkit builds with websocket support on these devices?
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?
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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.
Re: (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 w
Re: (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: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.
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Especially the little guy shouldn't put hundreds of dollars into Adobe Flash Professional to create slow-loading, unsemantic binary blobs and call it a "website". Your customers will be much happier with a snappy search engine optimized standard-compliant HTML page, a good looking CSS stylesheet and maybe some fancy and gracefully degrading Javascript effects as icing on the cake. There are loads of freely available open source content managment systems out there with support for themes which will provide y
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"I spent a lot of time creating a Flash-based website so that it would be more appealing to customers than an HTML site."
I think I found your problem. Like so many things, it can be traced back to a faulty assumption.
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Is Mr Jobs really suggesting that I should now create an app for my business instead?
No, he's suggesting you tailor your website to what your customers are using, not what you're expecting them to use.
another flash article? (Score:4, Funny)
This is great! Now whenever I need to find out what does or does not support flash, I can just come to flashdot! Seems to be all that's posted here nowadays.
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: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm pretty sure that Silverlight is the Web standard of .NET.
Re:Some of you keep forgetting something... (Score:5, Interesting)
Flash 10.1 uses hardware acceleration for video, so presumably battery life will be longer.
Also, on Adroid, Flash delivers better performance than HTML5/Canvas (http://visualrinse.com/2010/04/15/benchmarking-html5-vs-flash-player-10-1-on-mobile-devices/).
Regarding "some of its features make little sense on a multi-touch screen" -- nothing springs to mind, care to elaborate? It does have rollover support but that doesn't mean that you have to use it. It has multi-touch support too...
As for security... I can only recall 3 major flaws in the last 5 years; maybe there are more but it's still not more insecure than Java or IE.
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No, because most of us look around for the facts.. (Score:2)
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.
Flash 10.1 is built for mobile devices, as was Flash Lite -- which was just a bit limited, but it's been around for about 9 years,. 10.1 takes full advantage of GPU acceleration for both video playback and drawing vectors, which helps out for both performance and battery life.
All the devices that are supporting 10.1 allow full access to the GPU, so battery life is no more an issue for Flash on them, than any other platform, it will come down to the competence of the developer, not the toolkit itself.
What is this "Flash" Google is talking about? (Score:2)
Something that's often missed is that "Flash" is a set of various versions and video formats. As I understand it, mobile Flash 10.1 will not support Actionscript 1.0 and 2.0, only giving you Actionscript 3.0. How many websites and games were made in the older format and continue to be?
Not only that... this is weird but according to this chart [appleinsider.com] it won't support H.264 but instead have On2 video format. That would be the guys that Google just bought. Perhaps this is another part of why they're supporting fl
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You need ActionScript 3 in order to access new APIs like mult-touch for mobile devices. 10.1 mobile will playback all AS1/2 content, but to state the obvious, any developer that's concerned about their content working on a mobile platform should update it accordingly, which is true for any platform.
No, 10.1 mobile fully supports H.264 video and it's fully GPU accelerated. Flash adopted this format back in 2008 a
Re:thats nice but (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't the iPhone. There are other [cyanogenmod.com] options [openeclair.org] available.
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You can get Flash on an iPhone if you jailbreak it too.
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Flash doesn't things you just can't do with the web using any other technology.
Once HTML5 has matured enough to compete, it'll be an option. But for now, HTML5 is practically vaporware.
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haha, Flash doesn't things
I think that was Freudian.
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There are a lot of things Flash does that HTML5 will never do.
What Jobs really wants is to replace Flash with Cocoa (since he knows HTML5 and JavaScript will never be good enough) so he can sell you all the dev tools and get royalties on any third party tools.
What's the motto that is so selectively applied? Follow the Money?
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for now, HTML5 is practically vaporware.
What major PC web browser doesn't support HTML5? Chrome supports it, Safari supports it, Firefox supports it, Opera supports it, IE 9 supports most of it, and even IE 6 through 8 support it through the Chrome Frame plug-in.
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for now, HTML5 is practically vaporware.
What major PC web browser doesn't support HTML5? Chrome supports it, Safari supports it, Firefox supports it, Opera supports it, IE 9 supports most of it, and even IE 6 through 8 support it through the Chrome Frame plug-in.
Sadly, what you just said is that the major web browser does NOT support it. Which is sadly, Internet Explorer.
You forget that 80-90% of Internet users are not the "generally tech savvy" bunch of people that Slashdot readers tend to be. That means (a) still a big IE user base, or (b) most are not willing or unaware of or incapable of installing the Chrome Frame plugin under IE. Coupled with the fact that IE9, (which is not yet released), as you already admitted does not properly support HTML5 (and may nev
Installing Chrome Frame vs. Flash Player (Score:2)
most are not willing or unaware of
From the Chrome Frame page [google.com]: "If Google Chrome Frame is not installed, you can direct your users to an installation page." Flash Player works the same way.
or incapable of installing the Chrome Frame plugin under IE.
People are capable of installing Flash Player in order to watch YouTube in IE 6 through 8. The only way I can see that one is "incapable of installing the Chrome Frame plugin" is if one does not have a machine's administrator password. And in that case, you're probably at work, not at home.
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most are not willing or unaware of
From the Chrome Frame page [google.com]: "If Google Chrome Frame is not installed, you can direct your users to an installation page." Flash Player works the same way.
or incapable of installing the Chrome Frame plugin under IE.
People are capable of installing Flash Player in order to watch YouTube in IE 6 through 8. The only way I can see that one is "incapable of installing the Chrome Frame plugin" is if one does not have a machine's administrator password. And in that case, you're probably at work, not at home.
Again, us slashdotters need to remove our tech savvy mentality from the equation.
Almost everyone knows what Flash is. It's pre-installed on lots of computers anyway... all a user ever has to do is upgrade it.
Now... ask a "regular computer user" to download some new plugin - even one with Google's name attached to it (since it's not something they have ever heard of (the plugin - not Google)) and see what happens.
Add to that, with the exception of for watching some video, most people simply leave a sit
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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:thats nice but (Score:5, Informative)
But can you install them on any Android phone? Which I think is what he was after.
If you can flash the device, then yes, you can install them on any phone. It's a replacement of the OS.
There are websites that tell you how to get in to the various rom-flash modes for each phone.
A lot of the stuff they are doing, though, can be done with apps (including tethering for almost all devices and carriers), so I'm not sure what the point is, really. They do have kernel tweaks, but I'm not sure they're worth it.
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So before you can put flash on your flash, you have to flash your flash? Or is flash not put on the flash?
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My G1 is still stuck at 1.6! Why should I get excited about 2.2?
Yeah I know there are 3rd party OS's but I kinda like the vanilla UI.
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He should of asked about the refusal of Verizon to carry the g-phone.
Verizon has contractual obligations and a considerable advertising investment in the Motorola Droid. *Every* service provider makes such deals, there's nothing nefarious going on other than standard business practices.
Besides, Verizon sucks, why would you want to sign up with them anyway?
There's a map for that (Score:2)
Besides, Verizon sucks, why would you want to sign up with them anyway?
A carrier is useless if you get zero bars. Some people find that Verizon Wireless has better 3G coverage than AT&T and T-Mobile.
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Besides, Verizon sucks, why would you want to sign up with them anyway?
Besides their excellent 3G coverage, there's also the fact that the Droid is still the only top-tier Android phone with a physical keyboard. The Nexus One is nice, but only if you don't care about using SSH or emulators.
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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.
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That's because all applications for the iPhone are signed by apple.
Re:Hackers have a new window (Score:5, Interesting)
What was that whoosh? Low flying ducks again?
Damnit; of course Apple's signing is the only thing protecting us from the void. That's why networks with Symbian phones (where the user can install just about anything they want) collapse almost every day of the week. Nothing at all to do with Apple being a bunch of control freaks.
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if that does happen, and it's somewhat likely, google will end up with some egg on their face.
And if they're feeling REALLY ballsy, they'll put an adobe PDF viewer on the 'droid too.
Flash, Adobe Reader, and Word/Excel have really been the document exploits of choice for quite some time. Anyone have any hard numbers on percent of document exploits? (Explorer needs an Honorable Mention here I think too)
Normally I'd say "sandbox it", but the flash VM just doesn't work that way. True, properly implemented, i
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Well right now is the perfect opportunity to rag on the competition (Apple) for not including a feature that the public wants ("has been trained to believe they need"?) This may very well come to bite goggle on the butt the first time a worm winds its way through the droid market. They're just betting that they'll have gotten their money's worth out of the hype they're creating now by the time it comes full circle. I'd tend to think "not if, WHEN", but people have been saying that about Apple's worm and
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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 d
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[...] Jobs obviously envisions a platform that is patented and locked down to the exclusion of all competitors.
Game console companies do precisely that and few complain. In fact they are even worse because they require involvement of large publishers and indies are often intentionally excluded.
At least Flash has the merit of being multi-platform.
Java also has a merit of being multi-platform and look at its advances (or lack of them) on desktop.
As soon as efficiency becomes a requirement (and mobile phones are quite demanding in e.g. battery life department) all generic multi-platform toolkits become a burden.
They make life of software developers easy (who are
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Game consoles are not a general purpose information/work/entertainment device.
Then play games, some of them have very basic communication systems but to compare a game console to a smartphone is ridiculous.
That said, I'm all for more open game consoles but they're not a good comparison.
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Game consoles are not a general purpose information/work/entertainment device.
Then play games
Game consoles play major label games, not games in general. The only console that comes remotely close to the iPhone App Store model is the XNA environment on Xbox 360.
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IIRC for XNA one also has to have a publisher. Though sometimes MS itself takes over and does the publishing itself.
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IIRC for XNA one also has to have a publisher. Though sometimes MS itself takes over and does the publishing itself.
"Sometimes"? As I understand the Xbox Live Indie Games program, Microsoft will publish almost any XNA game that passes peer review, as long as it doesn't use 1. text or speech in a constructed language, 2. procedural audio, or 3. a programming language that requires support classes that aren't part of the .NET Compact Framework.
ObFlash: XNA competes with Flash as a platform for indie video games, especially as Windows Phone 7 Series grows in popularity.
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Game consoles are not a general purpose information/work/entertainment device.
B.S.
Consoles now are more or less general purpose home entertainment systems - often featuring web browsers, many dedicated Internet services and even business applications.
I'd say phone much much less of a general purpose. It has a primary task - making calls. Also in part it exists because unlike playing games to make calls one also has to have the access to the mobile network. (Poorly made console - your personal problem. Poorly made phone - might make everybody in vicinity unable to make calls.)
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.
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I wouldn't call Flash a trash - thanks to FlashBlock/AdBlock I have little of the problem others are complaining about.
Though it seems that in my future Android phone I would have one more thing to disable right away.
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I wouldn't call Flash a trash - thanks to FlashBlock/AdBlock I have little of the problem others are complaining about.
Though it seems that in my future Android phone I would have one more thing to disable right away.
Screw flash.
I'd settle for an e-mail client that can move messages between folders [google.com].
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As much as I love Android there are other things that could be improved.
Until I have NoScript I don't want Flash anywhere near my Android! And even then I'd like to think sites will soon be moving away from Flash and it'll be unnecessary. For awhile there the lack of Flash on devices was a good reason not to use it. Now the nonsense can run wild again.
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As much as I love Android there are other things that could be improved. Until I have NoScript I don't want Flash anywhere near my Android! And even then I'd like to think sites will soon be moving away from Flash and it'll be unnecessary. For awhile there the lack of Flash on devices was a good reason not to use it. Now the nonsense can run wild again.
Seems like what you are asking for is Firefox for Android (already in testing for v2+ Android releases), NoScript for Firefox (already exists) and Flash.
So, it looks like you will get your wish. Assuming Firefox and Flash are both finished (out of alpha/beta and at GA) at about the same time.
flash causes global warming (Score:2)
when my computer is "idle" the flash plug in on my mac usually consumes 15% of the CPU. One has to wonder if that translates to the wall plug at all. It certainly shows up in how long my laptop lasts and how often my laptop fans cycle on. This happens all all 5 of my computers varying from about 8 to 15% depending on the machine. Even when I use flash block, the plugin still is the dominant CPU hog on an idle machine.
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Totally off-topic. Recently IT spent two weeks investigating why the brand new, totally green servers behave not as expected and even in off hours when they should be idle consume more power than specified. Well, after two weeks of monitoring they have found that one of the services is written in Java and *never* idles. Even if it doesn't have any client connections and no requests to process it still takes 0.3-0.6% of CPU cycles.
So somehow I can easily believe that not-necessarily-poorly-coded Flash ap
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Free games. Access to web sites that use Flash heavily, like Midomi (for recording and playing back audio) or Newgrounds (vector animations).