Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch: the full interview

If you've seen the most recent Engadget Show, then you know that Kevin Lynch is one interesting dude. In fact, we had such a lengthy conversation with him that we couldn't fit the whole thing into our allotted time! Still, we thought what he had to say was pretty darn interesting, so we wanted to share the entire clip here. If you've got about 37 minutes and a hankering for Flash talk... today is your lucky day.

[VforVinDiesel Posted May 26th 2010 11:16AM]

Ooooh. A new video player. Me like.

[macmann Posted May 26th 2010 11:20AM]

@futurerheza
I love Adobe's other products, but I hate flash.

Anyone else think this guy smacks of desperation?

[Esulatell Posted May 26th 2010 11:21AM]

@VforVinDiesel

It's probably .HTML5 ;)

[maati Posted May 26th 2010 11:24AM]

Watching this video on my Android phone on the go!

Yeah having Flash on my phone is just great!

[pedmart Posted May 26th 2010 11:50AM]

@futurerheza watching on htc hero.. but ran out of battery.. so early.. i just finished watching at home

[annoynimous Posted May 26th 2010 12:36PM]

@pedmart

mmm seems like this CEO is ready to jump up and sing: "Flash!.... ahh ahhhhhh... saviour of the universe!!"

[PaulY Posted May 26th 2010 12:39PM]

@VforVinDiesel

Great video player EXCEPT as with so many others if fails miserably if you zoom in your content. Engadget, please see what you can do to fix this. I know it's possible b/c YouTube's Flash player is great in this respect. Thx.

[annoynimous Posted May 26th 2010 12:41PM]

@annoynimous

whoops, a CTO (time for bed i guess)

[drh Posted May 26th 2010 1:21PM]

@futurerheza
If they really have rewritten flash from the ground up for mobile, maybe they should do the same for desktops!!!!!!!!

I am watching this Flash video and monitoring my system stats, despite following these debates, I have not done this before, god know why!?

I can clearly see that flash is using on average, 40% of my CPU with 27 threads and 116Mb of memory.

I paused the vid and switched to another window and watched a YouTube video (the Trailer for Four Lions Movie) in HTML5, the averages in comparison, 8% CPU, 1 thread, 2Mb of memory.

[pbaird00 Posted May 26th 2010 1:31PM]

@drh They did... Flash Player 10.1 is the same codebase, built from the ground up, for both mobile and desktop.

From your stats, it sounds like your running on a Mac. The latest Gala pre-release addresses some of this with hardware acceleration for h.264 video (you can download from labs.adobe.com) but more work needs to be done as Apple opens up more hardware APIs in order for Flash Player to compete with native video playback (Safari native video playback already has access to those APIs since both the browser and the OS are built by Apple) ... but that work is ongoing and as Apple opens up those APIs, it will be supported in the Flash Player.

[u01iz Posted May 26th 2010 1:33PM]

If I was Jobs, on the keynote:
- We are going to support Flash *boom* (creating hope, anticipation and migration from android)
- Only if we are satisfied from its speed and power consumption **BooM** (dropping the ball to Adobe)
- We are going to support it only for iPhone 4G ***BOOM*** (increase sales & upgrades)

[Pies Posted May 26th 2010 1:41PM]

No seek in video player?! Lame.

[ounkeo Posted May 26th 2010 1:53PM]

@drh

my PC is using between 4%-10% cpu usage. When the video is not running i'm running between 2% to 8%. Memory usage is neglibible.

This video/player isn't doing much to my 3 year old self-built gaming pc running vista 32.

[wetworker Posted May 26th 2010 4:02PM]

@drh I have a 64bit windows 7 rig with 4 gigs of ram,
I have Photoshop cs4 open with a 300 meg file
Flash,Illustrator.zune Marketplace playing my music,
Office,windows live mail,MSN. Seesmic desktop and Google chrome.
Rig feels just as fast if I had one app open.

Are you on a mac by any chance?

[lykashont Posted May 26th 2010 4:55PM]

@VforVinDiesel Flash and HTML 5 can work with each other just like flash and html 4 currently do, but flash also works outside of web browsers, and html 5 does not. Users need the best of both world not one choice only. http://j.mp/steve-jobs-v-apple-review

[Doctor Comrade Posted May 26th 2010 5:06PM]

@drh You must have a pretty crappy computer than. I'm only at 8% for CPU usage while watching this.

[screasey Posted May 26th 2010 5:07PM]

@Esulatell Probably Flash? What are you doing on tech site?

[jsocontrer01 Posted May 26th 2010 5:40PM]

@futurerheza They are telling you that now because you because its their only saving grace at this point.

However, how will game developers get paid?

I know there are alternative ways of getting paid. If I was a developer of games I would rather get paid because people bought my game in an app store instead of someone playing it for free online. Considering it works well.

[newjaruz Posted May 26th 2010 5:44PM]

@VforVinDiesel

Does anyone find it ironic that Josh is conducting the interview with a covered up iPad?

[jewgadget Posted May 26th 2010 10:03PM]

@VforVinDiesel
http://i49.tinypic.com/2uduywg.jpg
The resemblance is uncanny!

[kmorris97 Posted May 26th 2010 10:38PM]

@Esulatell Nope, it's Flash.

[DaveF Posted May 27th 2010 5:43AM]

@macmann Yeah, you hate Flash yet you're using it right now by watching this video! So it IS useful, right?

[alex904 Posted May 28th 2010 2:05PM]

@drh Dude, that's not flash, but player itself written in Flash. Flash is very optimized. Codecs are not though. But most CPU load comes from actual scripts running behind your player.

[alex904 Posted Jun 13th 2010 12:31AM]

@drh Flash video codecs are pretty much optimized. Probelm is with its acceleration and actual scripts behind players. Blame developers of players, not Adobe.

[MarkAnderson Posted May 26th 2010 11:16AM]

inb4 Aesop's foxes.

[MarkAnderson Posted May 26th 2010 11:17AM]

@MarkAnderson

Which is to say the sour grapes brigade who assume that just because their product of choice doesn't have a feature it must be crap.

[skyblaze Posted May 26th 2010 11:17AM]

only Engadget can pull off 37 minutes talking about a web standard

[nando2323 Posted May 26th 2010 11:20AM]

@skyblaze Standard? More like platform, but definitely not a "standard".

[skyblaze Posted May 26th 2010 11:24AM]

@nando2323

Ah, I'm getting my terminologies mixed up.

Oh well... that's my fail for the day (could've been worse)

[MarkAnderson Posted May 26th 2010 11:24AM]

@nando2323

So... uh... what do most videos on teh intarwebs tun on?

[Lord Vader Posted May 26th 2010 11:27AM]

@MarkAnderson. I'll have you know the Force plugin is at least 20X more popular than Flash when it comes to web video

[MarkAnderson Posted May 26th 2010 11:29AM]

@Lord Vader

I know but it always feels like someone's watching me when I use it.

...

Or is that strangling rather than watching?

[skyblaze Posted May 26th 2010 11:43AM]

@Lord Vader

so THAT'S why you can force choke people over the internet... should've known

[jaxim Posted May 26th 2010 12:27PM]

@skyblaze I think Josh should have asked the question:

"Would Adobe ever consider open sourcing the flash player to counter arguments that state that improvements to the flash player is beholden to one company?"

[chaddledee Posted May 26th 2010 1:50PM]

@jaxim Flash Player is open source.There are like 3 alternative Flash Players you can use.

[xanavi Posted May 26th 2010 3:12PM]

@Lord Vader STOP FORCE CLOSING APPS ON MAH ANDROID VADER!

[Chazwell Posted May 26th 2010 11:17AM]

Thank you.

[Gobes Posted May 26th 2010 11:19AM]

State of those specs!
Anyway, I'd watch it - but flash will probably crash before the 37 minutes are up ;)

[apairofdocs Posted May 26th 2010 11:21AM]

I love all the comments about the content of a 37 minute video... That are all posted 6 minutes after the video was posted.

[Sport6 Posted May 26th 2010 11:22AM]

What's with the Harry Potter look?

[bolezhinkov Posted May 26th 2010 12:13PM]

@Sport6

I was thinking it was a tribute to Ben from Lost.

[Sport6 Posted May 26th 2010 12:32PM]

@bolezhinkov I haven't watched Lost so could very well be that.

[Bosco Posted May 26th 2010 11:23AM]

This guy will be CEO of the world in 10 years.

[Sean Connery Posted May 26th 2010 11:46AM]

@Bosco
I believe that position is to be opened and filled by Mr. Google

[petebob796 Posted May 26th 2010 12:05PM]

@Sean Connery I think Dr. Google or Professor Google is better

[Khav Posted May 26th 2010 12:25PM]

@petebob796 Given the trend in the high-tech/computer industry, the safest bet is to say "Steve Google"

[geoken Posted May 26th 2010 2:03PM]

@Khav

It's Ron Google you noobs. Look it up.

[r3loaded Posted May 26th 2010 11:24AM]

I still don't understand all these "flash crashed my browser/computer/car" comments - I've used Flash for over 10 years now, never had any crashes or performance issues with it.

[MarkAnderson Posted May 26th 2010 11:25AM]

@r3loaded

You probably don't use a Mac. No-one else seems to have that many problems with it.

[Uncontrol Posted May 26th 2010 11:26AM]

@r3loaded Must not be using a Mac.