Fact: Flash is the first interactive vector graphics format that combines a lightweight, and powerful just in time compiled engine/virtual machine. Can you name another? svg -no vm, ...? Vector graphics can be small, scalable and deliver a big bang for the buck. What's not to like?
Myth: Flash sucks battery life.
Fact: This is all up to the implementation. The bottom line is anything consuming floating point processing power will eat CPU ticks, and the thus, battery. Typically, a mobile implementation would need to go idle at some point and sleep vs. redrawing all those vectors. By nature it is no more a battery eater then playing video back on the iPhone.
Myth: Steve reportedly thinks it's crud.
Fact: Steve is actually an envious bitter queen. Remember, Steve Jobs owned 17% of Adobe when Adobe first started out and thinks they owe him a great amount of gratitude. In actuality, Adobe owes Steve no more then Adobe owes Xerox Parc for researching desktop publishing technology and Apple's theft of the GUI. In 'Triumpth of the Nerds', Steve is quoted as saying 'great artist steal' and that they stole alot from Xerox Parc for their GUI, later on to say how much he hated M$ for stealing the GUI from Apple (the same GUI elements that Apple stole from Xerox Parc -who has yet to see a dime). Its one thing to change or revise one's thoughts, but in the same breath? Steve's a hypocrite!
Just as Steve is bitter over his being fired from Apple because of the Macintosh failure (READ: Macintosh was a success AFTER Jobs left –desktop publishing was then a boom and Apple’s killer app), Steve continues his personal rampage against Adobe because Adobe abandoned a lot of Mac technology as the PowerPC was outpaced by Window/Intels. Bottom line, Adobe products rock on Windows and some are just not available for Apple (Adobe Encore, Adobe OnLocation). Also because such products work exclusively with the generation of High Definition content, like creating BlueRay disc, something else you cannot do with Apple.
Overall, Jobs wants to dominate High Definition content via downloading through iTunes and ‘get back’ at Adobe, and Flash is in his way.
Looks like we got a lying Microsoft fanboy here. That crap about Steve Jobs stealing from PARC is the biggest myth in computer history.
Apple actually licensed the GUI from PARC by giving Xerox Apple stock in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product. Xerox did not believe in the technology because the Xerox Star (which was actually released in 1981) had originally failed in the market. The Xerox Star sold poorly because it was priced out of the market, selling for $16,000 or up to $100,000 for a file and print server.
And Steve wasn't fired because the Macintosh failed. First of all, the Macintosh failed because John Sculley raised the price to 2,500, a move that Steve protested against (The Lisa had failed because of its high price and Steve didn't want to repeat that mistake). That was merely the beginning of the problems between Steve and Scully. Ultimately Steve was fired because of a power struggle with the board of directors. He was fired because he wanted to replace Sculley as CEO. The board lined up behind Sculley instead.
Other than Steveorevo's last paragraphs being more opinion than fact, although there are still quite a few facts in there. If you didn't like his tone and ignored him for this reason, that's your choice and maybe your fandom lies else where.
But he is right, Flash content could easily run on a 333Mhz ARM processor which the iPhone has, content just needs to be optimised to do so. You have a Flash site with 1001 vectors flying around with glow, blur and god knows what else filters on, you're just slamming your head against a wall if you expect it to work on slow computers/mobile devices. With the right use of screen size, making filter-heavy content solid PNG images instead of letting the CPU calculate the filters on the fly, use frame by frame or motion tweens instead of ActionScript for animations, you can very easily cut down the CPU consumption and make attractive sites to run on low CPU power. If iPhone Flash DOES ever come to existence, I don't think we should expect every website ever made in Flash to work right away and, much like there are HTML/CSS websites out there optimised for the iPhone, Flash sites will have to optimise themselves as well.
But we may just be jumping the gun and Apple may welcome Flash incorporation into the Safari browser, we've hardly given this time to find out.
Hang on. So iphone can't do flash yet?? What is the point of a media rich phone with a large screen if it can't do flash? I'm sorry for sounding ignorant, but had no idea about this 'till now.
Flash (real, not lite) runs handily on the Nokia N800 and N810; they have a 400 MHz ARM CPU vs. iPhone's 416 MHz ARM.
Flash is doable on this class of device; but of course, content that was designed by backing off until it didn't bog down a 3GHz desktop is gonna be a lovely slideshow. (And it's well known as a battery hog, because many flash apps don't stop cranking out frames when nothing's moving.) Maybe Apple doesn't want it, because, with a lot of the flash content that's available, it would make the iPhone look slow; dissing it may make Steve Jobs look slow to a few people, but that's much better for business than making your product look bad.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Isaac @ Mar 19th 2008 10:41PM
Why do you toy with my heart engadget?
Dave @ Mar 19th 2008 11:45PM
Check out these Adobe blogs regarding this:
http://madowney.com/blog/2008/03/19/flash-on-the-iphone
http://www.flashdevices.net/2008/03/adobe-flash-player-coming-to-iphone.html
derX @ Mar 20th 2008 12:08AM
If Engadget didn't toy with your heart, specifically, then it would toy with another person's heart.
I, for one, am willing to be so selfless as to allow your heart to be toyed with (and whatever else that entails) in place of mine or anyone else's.
----
Suck it up, besides, suffering for other peope is a popular way to become famous. See, Isaac, you're a star!
Steveorevo @ Mar 20th 2008 12:25AM
OK... I'm here to clear up some myths.
Myth: Flash sucks, I'd rather use...
Fact: Flash is the first interactive vector graphics format that combines a lightweight, and powerful just in time compiled engine/virtual machine. Can you name another? svg -no vm, ...?
Vector graphics can be small, scalable and deliver a big bang for the buck. What's not to like?
Myth: Flash sucks battery life.
Fact: This is all up to the implementation. The bottom line is anything consuming floating point processing power will eat CPU ticks, and the thus, battery. Typically, a mobile implementation would need to go idle at some point and sleep vs. redrawing all those vectors. By nature it is no more a battery eater then playing video back on the iPhone.
Myth: Steve reportedly thinks it's crud.
Fact: Steve is actually an envious bitter queen. Remember, Steve Jobs owned 17% of Adobe when Adobe first started out and thinks they owe him a great amount of gratitude. In actuality, Adobe owes Steve no more then Adobe owes Xerox Parc for researching desktop publishing technology and Apple's theft of the GUI. In 'Triumpth of the Nerds', Steve is quoted as saying 'great artist steal' and that they stole alot from Xerox Parc for their GUI, later on to say how much he hated M$ for stealing the GUI from Apple (the same GUI elements that Apple stole from Xerox Parc -who has yet to see a dime). Its one thing to change or revise one's thoughts, but in the same breath? Steve's a hypocrite!
Just as Steve is bitter over his being fired from Apple because of the Macintosh failure (READ: Macintosh was a success AFTER Jobs left –desktop publishing was then a boom and Apple’s killer app), Steve continues his personal rampage against Adobe because Adobe abandoned a lot of Mac technology as the PowerPC was outpaced by Window/Intels. Bottom line, Adobe products rock on Windows and some are just not available for Apple (Adobe Encore, Adobe OnLocation). Also because such products work exclusively with the generation of High Definition content, like creating BlueRay disc, something else you cannot do with Apple.
Overall, Jobs wants to dominate High Definition content via downloading through iTunes and ‘get back’ at Adobe, and Flash is in his way.
CB17 @ Mar 20th 2008 12:39AM
@Steveorevo
While I'm not going to debate the value, or in my opinion lack thereof (way too overused, see: Flash Ads), of flash.
The problem is that there's NO way to get the full version of Flash on the iPhone and Flash lite is just WAYYY to gimped. Sorry, it's true.
carlo2 @ Mar 20th 2008 2:35AM
@Steveorevo
Did you call him a "bitter queen"? YOU DID!!!!
Mymaclife @ Mar 20th 2008 3:38AM
@ Steveoreve - Anyone who is ignorant of history will find your final comments 'enlightening' For FACT read 'opinion'.
How wrong of Jobs, the CEO of a commercial organisation, to want to make money!?!!?
clak @ Mar 20th 2008 4:22AM
@Steveoreo
Looks like we got a lying Microsoft fanboy here. That crap about Steve Jobs stealing from PARC is the biggest myth in computer history.
Apple actually licensed the GUI from PARC by giving Xerox Apple stock in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product. Xerox did not believe in the technology because the Xerox Star (which was actually released in 1981) had originally failed in the market. The Xerox Star sold poorly because it was priced out of the market, selling for $16,000 or up to $100,000 for a file and print server.
And Steve wasn't fired because the Macintosh failed. First of all, the Macintosh failed because John Sculley raised the price to 2,500, a move that Steve protested against (The Lisa had failed because of its high price and Steve didn't want to repeat that mistake). That was merely the beginning of the problems between Steve and Scully. Ultimately Steve was fired because of a power struggle with the board of directors. He was fired because he wanted to replace Sculley as CEO. The board lined up behind Sculley instead.
And oh yeah, Flash still sucks.
Rich @ Mar 20th 2008 6:03AM
"The problem is that there's NO way to get the full version of Flash on the iPhone and Flash lite is just WAYYY to gimped."
Flash Lite 3 is just Flash 8 with a different name. It's not 'to gimped'.
ssuk @ Mar 20th 2008 6:04AM
Other than Steveorevo's last paragraphs being more opinion than fact, although there are still quite a few facts in there. If you didn't like his tone and ignored him for this reason, that's your choice and maybe your fandom lies else where.
But he is right, Flash content could easily run on a 333Mhz ARM processor which the iPhone has, content just needs to be optimised to do so. You have a Flash site with 1001 vectors flying around with glow, blur and god knows what else filters on, you're just slamming your head against a wall if you expect it to work on slow computers/mobile devices.
With the right use of screen size, making filter-heavy content solid PNG images instead of letting the CPU calculate the filters on the fly, use frame by frame or motion tweens instead of ActionScript for animations, you can very easily cut down the CPU consumption and make attractive sites to run on low CPU power. If iPhone Flash DOES ever come to existence, I don't think we should expect every website ever made in Flash to work right away and, much like there are HTML/CSS websites out there optimised for the iPhone, Flash sites will have to optimise themselves as well.
But we may just be jumping the gun and Apple may welcome Flash incorporation into the Safari browser, we've hardly given this time to find out.
Cunthor @ Mar 20th 2008 8:24AM
Hang on. So iphone can't do flash yet?? What is the point of a media rich phone with a large screen if it can't do flash? I'm sorry for sounding ignorant, but had no idea about this 'till now.
Benson @ May 11th 2008 5:10PM
Flash (real, not lite) runs handily on the Nokia N800 and N810; they have a 400 MHz ARM CPU vs. iPhone's 416 MHz ARM.
Flash is doable on this class of device; but of course, content that was designed by backing off until it didn't bog down a 3GHz desktop is gonna be a lovely slideshow. (And it's well known as a battery hog, because many flash apps don't stop cranking out frames when nothing's moving.) Maybe Apple doesn't want it, because, with a lot of the flash content that's available, it would make the iPhone look slow; dissing it may make Steve Jobs look slow to a few people, but that's much better for business than making your product look bad.