News - Adobe CTO fires back at Flash battery life claims

[mikerr]

Creating these very public spats keeps Apple in the headlines, it's all good for Apple's PR machine.

[aidanjt]

Creating these very public spats keeps Apple in the headlines, it's all good for Apple's PR machine.

True. But that doesn't make their point any less valid. Flash sucks hard, and it's about time someone with influence said it.

[TheAnimus]

True. But that doesn't make their point any less valid. Flash sucks hard, and it's about time someone with influence said it.

There is a huge difference between saying Flash sucks hard, and saying we should use x, we should do y differently.

Apple at the moment aren't proposing anything that can compete, HTML5 may have its day, do not mistake me, but it just isn't now.

[aidanjt]

I thought that this was about battery life when doing 'normal' browsing, a site even like Hexus forums has flash adverts that are animations.

Normal browsing includes YouTube and the like.

Who is actually running with a hardware accelerated HTML5 client right now? (ok actually I've started to have IE9 on all my Win7 boxes at home, but I don't actually use it much...)

*shrug* Since the standard itself isn't finalised, I'd hardly expect any implementations to be completed either.

So right now, a site like hexus is faced with three options, Flash, Gif Animations, Static Content.
(I'm not even going to pretend silverlight is a viable option, despite it been my personal favourate out of all these technologies, its simply much more elegent than HTML5!)

I'm fairly sure for most websites those are in order of preference from the advertiser therefore its how much money they will get. When I'm on my stupidly over powered for web browsing desktops I would personally rather burn that extra 1W or less [...] and let hexus have the extra few fractions of a cent, hey it all adds up and I'd sooner keep the adds down to a few flash ones, than a boatload of static ones to pay the bills.

I'd rather sites renegotiate with their advertisers to cut out flash altogether so they a) globally squander less energy, b) stop needlessly damaging portable devices, c) close off a long standing security hole, and d) so people like me who block flash can start contributing revenue.

(because you know, I run a proper desktop OS, with HW acceleration)

Uhhhh..... Both OS X and X11 have acceleration for 2D, 3D, and Video. The problem isn't lack of acceleration, the problem is Adobe would rather push their appalling software renderer, than use the accelerated options. Either out of laziness, or incompetence (let's face it, even a monkey could figure out VA-API). The only thing stopping Adobe from making Flash suck less is Adobe.

Now Apple can either work with Adobe, as Microsoft have or they can just throw their toys out of the pram and dictate which way the market should go. Regretabbly I think its the latter.

Short of Apple writing the flash plugin patches to enable acceleration, which they can't do since it's a closed source plugin, there's nothing more Apple can do for them. Likewise with X developers.

[aidanjt]

There is a huge difference between saying Flash sucks hard, and saying we should use x, we should do y differently.

Apple at the moment aren't proposing anything that can compete, HTML5 may have its day, do not mistake me, but it just isn't now.

HTML4 was working just fine before Flash came along. Flash didn't do anything new, it just cobbled everything together, very poorly.

[TheAnimus]

HTML4 was working just fine before Flash came along. Flash didn't do anything new, it just cobbled everything together, very poorly.

Ah yes, it did nothing new. Make me a weeble and bob in HTML4, with low cost?

With plenty of software we have to push costs of development on to the end user, sometimes these are performance choices. Otherwise we'd all be hand crafting assembly. (Actually I like a bit of MASM32 every now and again, I don't like the 64bit so much, and well when I spend all day in noddy languages its fun).

Normal browsing includes YouTube and the like.

Erm as a percentage of bandwidth maybe, but on the whole I'd have thought not that much? For me its the 5+ adds on the page that are the killer, not the one embedded flash video.

*shrug* Since the standard itself isn't finalised, I'd hardly expect any implementations to be completed either.

So your saying everyone should make their sites in HTML4 then?

I'd rather sites renegotiate with their advertisers to cut out flash altogether so they a) globally squander less energy, b) stop needlessly damaging portable devices, c) close off a long standing security hole, and d) so people like me who block flash can start contributing revenue.

And I'd rather be traveling up the mekong delta, before having a nice little rest in Hoi An. But somehow I don't think I'd be able to negociate that for the same money my client are paying me to do some architecture for them.

That is completely unrealisitic. Its hard enough to get ANY decent money in this highly competative internet.

Uhhhh..... Both OS X and X11 have acceleration for 2D, 3D, and Video. The problem isn't lack of acceleration, the problem is Adobe would rather push their appalling software renderer, than use the accelerated options. Either out of laziness, or incompetence (let's face it, even a monkey could figure out VA-API). The only thing stopping Adobe from making Flash suck less is Adobe.

Do they? Well why don't Apple use their own? They've not got round to it yet because it costs too much to write for. I'm curious what you've written in VA-API and what you've written on windows that makes you state these things. I'll take my simple Silverlight or WPF anyday.

Short of Apple writing the flash plugin patches to enable acceleration, which they can't do since it's a closed source plugin, there's nothing more Apple can do for them. Likewise with X developers.

So people can completely renogicate and ad contract because we all want to join hands and save the energy. (despite the fact, flash ads have more clicks...) but they can't fly a sen dev to adobe's offices? Yeh. I mean X can go stick a fig, they changed their API enough to make anyone not want to invest and might be short of cash (I honestly have no idea) but Apple have a massive warchest right now, all cash short term invested... Surely they could spare the few $ it would cost? Hell they could do a decent partial job and get change from a couple of M you would think. Unless of course its a lot more expensive than deving on windows, which it is, because no one does it. Not even apple, with their premier HTML5 pushing product.