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HTML5 will be integrated into the page itself. Disruptive Flash advertising is what people truly hate. When the ads migrate to HTML5 and weave themselves directly into the content, solicited garbage will be unavoidable. So thanks in advance to all of you blindly following Apple's lead.

The funny thing is Flash IS on the iPhone in a different format. There is some great games and apps made with Flash.

The funny thing is Flash IS on the iPhone in a different format. There is some great games and apps made with Flash.

Isn't this uncompetitive behaviour? sort of like MSFT pushing other browsers out of the landscape and getting sued by the gov. for a monopoly. Now, years later, the underdog - APPLE is doing the SAME thing with flash. Trying to kill off flash by forcing users to not use it. And before you say, people have a choice not to buy apple, well - didn't they have a choice not to buy windows (apple/linux etc right?). Many people buy the items, ipad etc. without knowing they wont run flash, then what happens? isn't this the core of monopolistic, bully behaviour?

Bonnie Smith
COO/Director FXP
http://www.forexpulse.com

I think ultimately HTML5 is up...

http://jaydeepwagh.blogspot.com

http://labs.codecomputerlove.com/FlashVsHtml5/

Flash is a closed system that vastly underperforms on non-windows PC systems. It is legacy, HTML5 is the future. Why is it the future? Because developers wont have to pay for software to develop HTML5 like they do for flash and they can use the same language and tools they use for the rest of their website work.

Granted video is only a small part of the purpose of either flash or html5, but it is for a vast number of consumers the only part of the technology they are bothered about (bbc iplayer, youtube etc)

There is a HUGE factor most HTML 5 and Apple fan boys are forgetting -

HTML 5 is merely a specification.

It only becomes a "standard" when the major browsers implement it in a consistent/standard way. That's where the floor falls out from under you. Now let's be real for minute, when was the last time a complex web page written in HTML, CSS and JS looked and functioned EXACTLY the same across IE 6,7,8, Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc????? I'm talking pixel perfect?? Sure, there are countless JavaScript hacks and checks to force things into certain browsers, but that very thing represents the hell most web designers face when building complex sites. I think the younger tech crowd has become complacent to this reality. Now your putting your faith in the HTML 5 messiah? Don't you people learn from history?

News FLASH (no pun intended), HTML 5 is not going to change this reality. You can call Flash a closed system all you want, but it is the closest thing to a "standard" the web has ever had. In case you haven't guessed, I am a Flash developer as well as a traditional web designer.

My two cents...

Anyway, for those who are really interested in the performance differences between html 5 video and Flash and in particular the performance difference across browser implementations of the video element, take a look at this
Html 5 Video Comparison

Flash 10.x
6 Secunia advisories
55 Vulnerabilities

Safari 4.x
8 Secunia advisories
80 Vulnerabilities

Like he said, Apple's comparisons are Flash to HTML5 -- the windows tests, however, compare flash 10.0 to flash 10.1. What happened?

We need a better article.

Also, another issue is that javascript + HTML is SO MUCH EASIER to hack and analyse. Flash requires extensive decompilation to get anything useful, and even then it's not much better than raw bytecodes. HTML + Javascript, however, can be edited, and the real source code can be viewed in a browser.

Bottom line is that flash, while being a memory hog and glitchy, is leagues more secure than HTML + javascript in the sense of modifications of source code.

General rule of thumb is to use either whenever it calls for it. Everyone is trying to compare Flash to HTML5 arguing their "features" as bugs or lack of function, when in reality everyone is forgetting the #1 GOLDEN RULE of use technologies that pertain to the project.

I'd never use flash for a touch application, and I'd never use HTML5+JS for a browser game. It's just as simple as saying you wouldn't use marshmallows in a cosmo and you wouldn't use limes in hot chocolate.

Poster John Candy is right, Steve Jobs is a dictator and he always has been. Doubt he'll ever tone it down if he hasn't by now.

Get back to me once you have, and then try and tell me that HTML5 will kill Flash.

The fact of the matter is that Adobe could easily write a version of Flash that is hardware accelerated on all Intel Macs with NVIDIA and ATI hardware, and even some later G4 and G5 machines as well; all they'd have to do is learn how to implement OpenGL properly so the video card could offload graphics rendering to the GPU.

Instead, Mac users are relegated to a subpar experience, and I think that The Steve is right for telling Adobe to go away when it comes to iOS and Flash. Same is true for Linux users - Adobe has no idea what they're doing on non-Windows platforms. And even on Windows, they are the kings of major security issues as of late.

For the record, I've also used Flash 10.1 beta on several Android Froyo phones (HTC Evo, HTC Droid Incredible, Motorola Droid, Google Nexus One) and have to say that it's still slower than native code on iOS first generation devices or Androind 1.6-based phones that won't be upgraded to 2.1 or 2.2 due to lack of RAM and slow processor/GPU.

Don't worry about flash being replaced in the video business. You still have web gaming and a lot of batteries to consume with your protected code :D

Flash 10.x
6 Secunia advisories
55 Vulnerabilities

Safari 4.x
8 Secunia advisories
80 Vulnerabilities

With all due respect apple doesn't create apps solely for it's itouch devices, rather they created an API that developers use to create apps and sell or give away for free to their choosing. Apple makes money when someone buys an app whether they built it inhouse or someone else did. Flash is not really used by and large by most developers for anything other than making websites look and behave more sophisticated. The downside of Flash from that standpoint, besides being slow and glitchy is that it is not seen by search engines for it's content. Someone could have built one of the coolest sites on the internet in Flash, yet it's close to impossible to find if it isn't built with every link opening a new HTML page containing the movie. This however then negates what flash is meant to do which is create a self contained movie with all of it's assets sitting inside of it. Flash is great in that it removes redundancy by using the same assets over and over without having to reload them, but the fact that webcrawlers can't read flash as the crawlers can't open movies and identify what is inside of them, nor should they have to is a huge downside to the application. Please don't think that search engines should develop this type of technology as that would be foolish. It would be akin to asking every search engine to play every video on youtube and elsewhere and analyze every frame.
Moreover, Flash isn't a secure environment as malicious codes have been created using Flash as an interface in something as simple as banner ads.
It is more than obvious at this point that game developers don't need to use flash or shockwave to develop games anymore for the iTouch devices that Apple sells, so given Flash's downside, why would developers want to use it when it's so difficult to create content in and has compatibility issues all over the place in regards to Actionscript versions and is transparent to web search engines. Moreover the cost that is involved in continuing to buy the next upgrade. As cool as Flash can look it has huge downsides... ones that HTML 5 will not as it continues to evolve.

The thing I hate about flash is the version changes in Linux. Adobe took a long time to bring flash to linux, and it's still slow and buggy. What will happen when 11 is out?

So let's dump the part of our past?

How barbaric. Screw you Apple

Seriously, there is nothing on the market that is gonna replace Flash and Flex authoring environment. No serious business is going to be completely dependent on something like Google Docs for serious work. Even on a Mac you can't live without windows. I know many fools who walk around with their mac books and still live in the windows os.

Apple is being greedy and is repeating many of the infractions that it once blamed microsoft for. Sorry folks, html 5 won't do anything to change the need for flash, which is why more money is invested in all mobile markets on flash than html5.

Flash and Java can be compared in a sense, but html 5 is not even in the same league. Its like comparing Flash and JavaScript, in specialized situations they can be compared, but overall its not even fair.

Because none of these "Flash Developers" have anything beyong drag-and-drop "look what I made" level of skill.

They'd all be running scared when the clients says "oh btw
we need this to run on CDROM too" and the flv player is
freaking out and won't scrub properly.

Is HTML5 going to allow for simultaneous of Web/CD
projects like Flash does?

At least if Flash is controlled by one company, (unfortunately, that's Adobe, regrettable - still wish it was Macromedia), it is cross-platform, and it's Adobe's problem to fix to run it cross-platform, sans iTouch. Adobe has no stake in any browser, except that it runs on all, and that is a good thing. If and when Adobe makes their own browser, is when I will have lost all hope in Flash.

I have noticed the speed and performance in Flash in Windows, because of Hardware Acceleration, but if Apple is closing the API to Flash, then it's a sad that Apple is more closed than Adobe is. No wonder it sucks the energy out of your Mac.

Flash Video still uses the QuickTime codec to make the conversions, so there's no conflicts there, but Flash is more than just Video, and I guess it infringes on the iTunes Business. Not even close, because I will still pay for stuff on iTunes. I just want websites to work properly on my iTouch.

I have lost all hope in Windows, and am writing these comments on a Mac, ironically. The computer world is in shambles right now.

Why by a closed system that prevents Flash and other web applications from using it's hardware acceleration? Oh yeah... who would think of this detail when buying a system.

Anyway, if Steve Jobs wants to prove his point that Flash is a resource hog, then he should give Adobe access to their hardware acceleration. Can't state Flash is incompatible if this web application is blocked to prove different.

BTW, Flash 10.1 works great with touch as the new Android devices, HP slate and Dell touch have demonstrated.

If Adobe were lazy, they would not be working with all the vendors minus one arrogant name to make sure developers and users would have a ubiquitous experience across all devices. www.openscreenproject.org.

Why did Apple feel it necessary to change their EULA and allow only Object C for development despite the fact that there was already Flash based apps on their app store. Basically they are telling the developers, you need to have one workflow for iphone and ipad, and a separate one for everything else.

BTW, have you seen how advertisers are about to get screwed by Apple. As more devices start shipping with Flash 10.1, and developers realize that they are bound by unreasonable Apple demands, more people will make the switch. Lets be honest, Apple is only as good as their app store.

Are you suggesting that developers who create Adobe Air apps, would all do their work for free?

There's nothing preventing these altruistic developers you speak of, from writing free App Store-approved apps, using Apple's developer tools, that do the same things as paid apps currently being sold on the App Store. There are numerous apps on the App Store that are free, that do many of the same things that paid App Store apps do. But most developers, if they write something that's fairly substantial, want to be paid for their efforts, and hence the ratio of developers who would write free vs paid Adobe Air apps, would probably be the same as currently write free vs paid App Store apps.

For those of you reading who don't know what a codec is, you are exactly the people this is for. The ones who are trumpeting HTML5 will save us all, with absolutely no idea what it is at all. Jobs is good at that, hes good at manipulating ignorant morons into spouting buzzwords in an attempt to carry his message.

Here are a few of the things Flash can do that HTML5 won't ever:
Socket connections, Capturing microphone input, Capturing video input, Transmitting live video, Peer 2 Peer network communications with STRATUS, or how about "Protecting your intellectual property with a binary SWF file"

prepare yourself for new benchmarks against Flash 10.1 :p

Good luck Jim!

So, if the CPU isn't enough let's rely on the GPU. Sounds a little like Microsoft's way of dealing with memleaks: if there are memleaks, then buy more memory.. don't fix the things!

What if one day the GPU isn't enough anymore?
Let the guys from HTML5 begin working with GPU APIs and we will see how many headaches will the Flash developers face...

HTML5 is still being edited. We are comparing a very optimized Flash ( version 10 or 10.1 ) to HTML5 which hasn't been around long as is still being edited by Google's Ian Dickson ..

People who hate Apple ( no i dont love them, but I dont hate them either ) are making this into Apple alone hates Flash.

Truth be told, the industry is slowly trying to minimize Flash usage. Google is competing against Apple, yet Google didn't have a problem completely removing flash from its mobile websites like Youtube ! And lets not forget Google is editing HTML5, not Apple !

Don't get me wrong - I don't hate Apple. I think they're great in other areas, I just find this argument ironic. Does the president of Adobe owe Steve Jobs $5 for a bar tab from 20 years ago or something? It seems like a pissing contest between these two CEOs.

I've just seen a graphical demo with a few houndred objects with physical behaviour running on HTML5 (Canvas) and Flash 10.1. Flash won the race four times ahead.

Flash 10.1. also supports Mulit-Touch Events, Gestures, Accelerometer Controls, Screen Orientation and many more...

The "war" between Apple and the rest of the world has nothing to do with performance or stability of the flash player, but with the fact that Apple could close it's App Store if Flash would become available on iDevices.

I presume that Apple will lose this and all it's other wars in the next decade if they don't go open source, as everything that ain't open source won't be accepted by people in the future.

It's like the french revolution against the monarchy. It will happen, someday ;)

http://magazine.mrckstudio.com/2010/04/html5-no-decapitara-flash/

Companies can choose to use Flash if they believe it easier / cheaper to implement / more efficient to implement / easier to maintain / more universal, etc. They can equally choose HTML5 for exactly the same reasons.

Flash might even be dying as some say, but the fact is that RIGHT NOW, there's a ton of sites with Flash menus / videos / games / animations. A slow implementation is better than no implementation.

If the customer has no Flash player, how are they going to view the content *IF ONE CHOOSES TO* (even with a slow or buggy implementation)? If one chooses to install, remove the install, or even block Flash in certain instances (Flashblock anyone?), that will be *THEIR* perogative: NOT Apple's, NOT Adobe's...

Except if you own a i* product. Your only choice is to not consume that particular content.

It's funny how Adobe wants to lock people into a single ecosystem to provide a consistent implementation for developers which is exactly what Apple's trying to do, but everyone seems to praise Apple for it (keeping out the competitors, and whatever else they feel like).

I'm a Flash developer, but effectively FLV video saved Flash. In the early stages using third party software such as Sorenson Squeeze was the only real way to deploy "Flash video" and since Adobe took over they have promptly moved Flash from a nice to have into something standard (even if this was Flash 7 on XP - which many of our clients still use).

Flash video and Actionscript has of course moved on rapidly since then. So while it will be nice to have a native cross platform/browser language which will just works and forces Microsoft to comply to something and I'm genuinely looking forward to HTML 5 to really get going - my main concern is that 2019 (or whatever it is) is ridiculous timeline.

Yes, Jan is right that we should be concerned there is no native video for HTML 5 (http://gizmodo.com/5490205/html5-vs-flash-the-video-benchmark-deathmatch) because until there is (and an expandable one) then there will always be the need for periphery add-ons therefore allowing room for non-conforming browsers/platforms.

Do write in if you would like to share your experiences with HTML5.

The second important thing is that it means Apple owns the developer community.

These are both facets of the same thing: owning one's destiny. Apple has not been able to avoid this on the desktop because the important desktop applications--the ones that make the Mac an indispensable tool--are big and owned by a variety of other companies. So, as an example, Apple is forced to cooperate with Adobe as long as the content industry is standardized on Adobe design tools. This is not without its perils, however; allowing another company to have a lock on essential tools is a big problem. At Sun, the internal transition to using X86 boxes on the client end was hampered FOR YEARS by Adobe's unwillingness to release things like Acrobat Reader on Solaris X86, even though this required no more than a recompile and a test cycle.

I totally believe that on the iPhone, Jobs wants to avoid this vulnerability. I also totally believe that on OS X the problem with Flash performance is that Adobe has architected Flash hardware acceleration in a way that is incompatible with the Mac OS X programming interface. And I would be shocked if Apple ever gave in and allowed direct access to the graphics hardware. Anyone who has been around the block a few times knows why you insist on people programming to interfaces rather than going around them.

Many of us don't have the friggin time to potty around with things that only work sometimes, and you have to download this or that to get it to work. Like Facebook. What a useless piece of junk. You sign up, and people start sending you Farmville crap. Meanwhile you can't use it with Explorer, and you have to download and switch browsers just to open the stupid thing.... just so you can find out what some person you hated in high school had for breakfast. BORING!!!

So your computer ends up being bogged down with junk application after junk application, slowing everything down... and mom and pop users have no idea what to do about it.

Facebook, Twitter, and all the other junk is popular now, but sooner or later your consumers will grow weary of the hassle, pick up the landline phone and start callig each other again to say hello, like they used to do. You'll see.

Your name and reputation will be the bottom line, and no one will trust any of your companies anymore.

Bing that. (I HATE Bing.... Google that.)

Right now I'm sitting here with useless junk... a brand new computer running Windows 7 that none of my software was compatible with. I upgraded, got 7Pro, and run it in XP... DUHHHH!!!!!!!!

WHY would a company put out a new program that none of the old software works with? To force you to buy all new software? Of course. Well, I just blew my disposable wad on the computer, so it's not going to happen for a while.

And I'm just one person. Everyone I talked to is pissing and moaning about Adobe not working on Windows 7, and heck, I spent two thousand dollars on their software just a couple of years back, and took soooo long to learn FLASH. Now to read this article really tanks. It sucks on so many levels I can't begin to express them all here.

Truth and bottom line is.. the consumer is tired of being ripped off while you guys flex your geek muscles amongst each other.

in fact there are almost no pages without html/css/js errors.

what if - for ex. - iPhone's safari would support flash.

apple is selling a ton of small games and applications for these devices, he the revenue is split between apple and the developer, and it is a multimillion dollar business, just the games.
there are great sites out there like newgrounds and kongregate with millions of greater games that you just can't buy on appstore.

so if you flash iPhone up, no one in there right mind will buy a game from apple, if they have access to millions of them for free. apple will lose a big chunk of money.
and there will be also apps in flash that do just anything for free.

implementing the Air run-time is much safer. adobe gets it's share, apple get's it's share, and everyone is happy, except the developer, but the platform will be used anyway, at least i will try it out because there are many more ways to make money of iPhone/pad users.

iPhone and iPad will not support flash in their browsers because apple wants your money.

i brought this up because the whole flash vs html5 was started by jobs. i am fully aware that the iphone/ipad users who actively browse the web is an irrelevant number.

I started using jquery last year for simple browser driven animations, and think its pretty damn great (though a bit wonky to code, imo). If HTML5 can deliver a compelling reason to produce some feature in something other that a discreet plugin - great! If it can't - then we have a lot of other options to do so. In the end, its our job as developers to produce an ever cleaner, user-friendly, and compelling online content - and we have many, many options to do so.

That being said the Flex SDK and the Flashdevelop authoring tools are FREE as air and provide a powerful open source method of producing SWFs, if you're interested.

It's important to note though that Flash is actually extremely light-weight when you consider how powerful of a platform it is. You don't believe me? Try to remember how slow Java Applets were (Flash's main competitor in the late 90s).
of (especially when you include the Flex framework).
The weaknesses of Flash its opponents always name (it's proprietary software, it's a compiled one-off plug-in, and it's comparably cpu intensive) are also its greatest strengths. Flash is more powerful and developer friendly than HTML 5 or javascript could ever dream of being.

So while HTML 5 may end up replacing some of the simpler things Flash does (and for good reason). Both large Rich Internet Application as well as more complex browser-based animations and games, will still require the Flash platform. The need for these will ensure Flash will continue to thrive for years to come.

One last thing to realize is that this entire recent questioning of the reliability of Flash has been brought on by Apple, as an attempt to explain its lack of support for the platform on its mobile devices. Please realize that this is merely a scapegoat argument, as this decision is purely monetary (support for Flash will cut into Apple's App store revenue) and not technologically based at all.

Mobile devices will soon support Flash ( some of them already do ) and Apple will have no choice but drop their rather dirty policies and allow a huge Flash community to create the most innovative products for their crappy devices. at the end of the day, it is simply a mobile phone, nothing else. so narrow-minded people stop fabricating dirty stories, you are fooling yourself ! Flash dominates the market and still remains the most appealing rich-media production tool. SEO, deep linking = all can be taken care of nowadays. myths about the above mentioned issues should be dispersed and left buried in the past.

most importantly, If Flash crashes your mac, then ditch it and buy a pc with Linux on it. Mac OS X is a stolen version of Linux, the actual core does not belong to Apple, it is an open source project made available to you for a nice fee !

Lastly, there is no HTML5-Flash war. It has never existed. HTML 5 owns no market and wont be in that position for the next 10 years ( fingers crossed ), it is only being very well promoted by those fearing ever-growing power of Adobe who could easily destroy the whole apple business model by pushing its powerful technologies onto those two "revolutionary" devices.... AIR - FLEX - FLASH - ACTIONSCRIPT - oh dear ! a lot to be worried about unlike a simple, limited markup language....

so...

do you blame the browser...

or,

the technology (flash, html5)

for the piss-poor performance?

Are we all crying over solving the wrong problem?

-Hung

Including annoying HTML 5 Popup adverts, and intros, flying 3D banners that needlessly utilise the OpenGL core.

It's all up to the developer to make good tools.

And Flash Player 10.1 now supports touch UI and i've been developing for Flash for free for years, using FlashDevelop and the free Flex compiler [windows only though].

94% of us run windows and have never really experienced any of these negative issues regarding Flash.

But a couple points:
1) HTML5 will be just as bad as flash, if not worse, when put in the hands of developers. There is nothing inherintly slow about flash, it just lets you do more, so people do more, and you get a heavy site.

Now that people can do more with HTML, they will, and you'll get super heavy sites/banners in HTML5.

2) Browsers support of standards is SLLLOOWWW. This is the achilles heel of HTML5. It'll be 3-5 years before we have a really stable reliant HTML5 implementation across browsers, that I as a developer can target. In the meantime, doing anything highly reliant on HTML would require I make about 7 different versions of something, and fill it with ugly hacks/workaround to get it to work.

In the meantime, while HTML5 flounders, and browser makers finally agree in implementation, Flash will have gone through 3-4 major versions, and have a ton of new functionality.

Flash just moves faster, is more flexible, and more reliable. 3 advantages that made it popular in the first place, and are still as strong as ever.

1. "With Flash, you are 100% reliant on Adobe to make a better Flash player". This is untrue. Anyone can build a Flash player. The SWF spec is open. This is what the Open Screen Project is about. google, Palm, RIM, etc. are all working with Adobe to build/port Flash players for their environments.

2. "HTML5 (video) will be better because of competition between browser vendors". Of course, the same applies to Flash. It will compete directly with HTML5 in terms of video, in addition to cometing with Silverlight, Java, etc. There is no difference. Adobe has the same incentive to improve their performance. Currently Flash has a large advantage over HTML5 videos by supporting H.264 across all browsers, as well as adaptive bitrate technology, encryption, custom metadata system, etc. Some of these issues will be very hard for HTML5 to resolve, eg. the codec issue unless Google open-sources its On2 codecs and these see wide adoption (Microsoft? Doubtful).

They should allow flash on websites surely.

Flash, or something like it, HAD to be developed in order to compete with that other technology we've grown to love: television. You cannot blame past companies that built out with Flash because let's be honest, animated GIF's just didn't cut it at the time.

Apple's choice not to support Flash, from a user's perspective is definitely a "break it" for me. I can barely forgive them for not including it on the iPhone. With a mobile device, we for some reason still forgive manufacturers when things don't work correctly. We also tend to throw all common sense out the window when excuses such as "too much cpu power" and "too much battery life" get thrown around. If you believe that, I have a bridge in New York...

Further, to have it absent from their iPad, which people will use primarily to surf the Web from their couch or bedside, will anger many buyers because suddenly that little blue box where Flash should appear is much much larger. And with more and more sites forgoing non-Flash
versions, the frequency of those blue boxes will increase dramatically. There are already iPad competitors on the market running full versions of Windows. Now is not the time for Apple to start disabling features.

It's true, that there're some hardware/software combinations which take flash quite well. But there'r just to many, which seem just to hate flash.

HTML5 seems the right choice for many flash use cases- It just does integrate a whole lot better in a web-page then any plugin, which is not interpreted by the webbrowser and must so always be something alien to the embedding page.

In my opinion, web-design with flash was always only the 2nd best approach.

Sorry flash, but i won't grieve over you.

Greets! :)

Comparing the Canvas tag with Flash is possible, but ultimately something very much for the future as in their current forms they are literally worlds apart.

The other thing is: HTML5 is very new, and not well optimized yet. There are lot's of improvements to be made and the performance picture will change very much over the coming years. At the same time, Flash probably nears the peak performance, as it already had years of optimizations done.

I remember S3 trio had some hardware accelerated playback back in mid 90's. And Adobe use it 15 years later :)

Why is is preferable for Apple to have 100% control of the iphone os? With Andriod I can have 100% control of my own phone.

This whole flash nonsense needs to be done away with. Why is it important for little animations? Advertising? Games? Pop up & down menus? So what? Microsoft products & flash are among the worst security risks in the modern era of computing & the quicker they go, the better off the world will be.

Adobe's whole attitude towards GNU/Linux is shameful. Apple won't release the API's, but GNU/Linux is wide open, folks, so what's the hold up? There must not be any money in it.

I just hope we can all keep from killing & attacking each other over this issue until a time comes when I can have a chip in my brain to stream this content directly to the front of my mind. Fingers crossed!

If you go HTML5, the performance depends on what browser you choose and what support it has for video rendering. There are browsers for pretty much all systems that will do this effectively.

To conclude, if you don´t want to lock yourself down to running Adobe flash on windows, HTML5 will be faster and better supported.

With Flash, we have to wait for Adobe to address the performance and security issues.

With HTML5, we can choose Chrome, Firefox, Opera, eventually Safari and IE, etc.

HTML5 encourages competition. If video performance is something that (super) users care about, they will start to use and recommend that browser.

"f you really think that Apple is doing this for anything else but business reasons then you are kidding yourself."

Of course they're doing it for business reasons, they are a business and so they do that kind of thing.

BUT, the reason they're doing it is so they can fix problems without relying on some other company who couldn't give a rats ass. At the moment, Apple can have 100% control of the iPhone OS. It really is that simple

It's not a compatibility issue. It's a greed issue. If your Mac is crashing because of Flash whereas PCs do not? Well - buy a PC - they just work."

Not having a flash plugin on the iPhone OS does NOT stop developers using Adobe Air to create apps for the App Store.

So you advocate buying a computer based on its ability to use flash? OK. BTW, Mac's don't "crash" because of flash, maybe the browser crashes (except Snow Leopard, where the plugin runs as a separate process, so flash dies all alone ). Just thought I'd set the record straight on that one. My recommendation would be to buy a Mac and install ClickToFlash.

As to the greed issue, are you seriously suggesting that Apple are trying to control everything on the Internet??? You seem to have a real problem with Apple, but to suggest this is paranoid delusional.

Just sayin.

With these facts in mind I'd have to conclude that Adobe is simply not telling the truth, possibly because of the whole spat over Apple's mobile devices. And it seems to be working. Flash on iPhone OS is a completely different can of worms, and yet people are already having trouble telling it apart from OS X.

Anyway, come on HTML5, I'm rooting for you!

"According to Adobe, hardware acceleration is not supported under either Linux or Mac OS X, the latter because Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. "

Um, what? No, really, WHAT? Are they saying that Apple is not letting Flash make OpenGL calls from a browser plugin? The people who did Processing for the Mac will be absolutely amazed to learn that.

Or are they saying their hardware acceleration is tied in to some API Apple doesn't even implement? DirectX perhaps? Adobe has played brinksmanship games to force Apple to change their APIs in the past (remember the Photoshop-vs-Yellow-Box-I-mean-Cocoa war?). This is more of the same.

If you really think that Apple is doing this for anything else but business reasons then you are kidding yourself. And yes, Flash will be just fine with or without Apple's help. I'm looking forward to the day when all the Apple fanbois whinge about those darn HTML5-based audio-autoplaying banners that can no longer be effectively blocked. Sorry to disappoint you, but the technology is not at fault here, and annoying ads as well as CPU hogging web apps will never go away.

This is nonsense. I've been building kiosk touchscreen apps in Flash for years. Admitted Flash does not yet support multi-touch but touch-friendly Flash apps are a matter for the app developers .. not for Adobe to rebuild Flash

In short, there's a desire for a single standard be it Flash or HTML5 with Apple pushing on one site, Adobe on the other, Google may be the decider depending on what they believe benefits Chrome and Android.

Reactions to ipad without flash: http://bit.ly/flash-on-ipad-right-or-wrong

"QuickTime is inadequate for the Flash Player for about 100 or more reasons. Examples: - It does not support RTMFP or other required protocols by the Flash Player. - It does not provide low level access to an H.264 decoder. - You can not read back RGB data with reasonable performance. - Pre 10.6 only supported baseline and some of main profile. etc. etc. etc."

http://www.kaourantin.net/2010/02/core-animation.html

@Others, for those complaining about this article not comparing HTML5 to Flash, don't be so lazy - read the article linked to in the main text (from StreamingLearningCenter.com) for the results yourself.

Two major online sources of revenue are:
1: Ads 2: Content

Is it any surprise that Apple is blocking a competing company's standard, when that standard is used mainly for ads and delivering content?

It's less about control of the device, and more about control of the distribution channel/money.

Any content coming through an iPhone app is an opportunity for apple to share in the revenues for both ads and content.

If people miss their flash content, the potential downside for apple is that people will buy Android rather than Apple devices. If that happens, the worst case scenario is Apple sells us a story about how they "finally" adopted flash because the "brilliant engineers" finally came up with a solution.

However, if people don't miss Hulu and the intrusive CPU/bandwidth hugging ads enough to buy a competing device, the upside for Apple is enormous. A proprietary disto channel for Video, Ads, and now with iPad, Print.

These guys aren't playing around.

But even then, where is the surprise? HTML5 is barely out of the gates as pre-beta stuff.. the standard isn't even properly ratified. And yet, in some cases it's already competitive with (or better than) Flash? I'm seeing no problem here.

If this is what's needed to get Adobe off their butts to stay competitive with Flash, then I'm all for it. At worst, we'll have an standard that's competitive with Flash, that works well across platforms. I see no problem with it being rough for a few years, since I dealt with Futuresplash in it's infancy and found it just as lame.

And that is the real problem. You can skip the OS and the web browser if the Flash program is sophisticate enough. Worst but most people intentionally ignored, it is not open standard.

what is the design requirements for this device?

heavy internet (can I call it that?) usage, or lighter more flighty usage?

I think that people are thinking this is a "tablet" like device, and I think Apple isn't/wasn't. I think the approach from Apple is that this an ereader that is pretty potent. People don't want the crappy ereaders available today... they want a portable device with a touch screen that has an OS built into it that's fast, non battery hog, and can pretty much do all the things there desktop can do on the go.

reality is that this isn't the device for that.

It's not a compatibility issue. It's a greed issue. If your Mac is crashing because of Flash whereas PCs do not? Well - buy a PC - they just work.

The few sites I miss flash with I blame the web designers for using a proprietry format for no good reason since without fail, other sites provide the same utility without it.

Sure, I know there are flash games etc that I can't view, but since those tend to be written for either a mouse or keyboard, they would be unusable on the iPhone (or any other touch screen only device) anyhow without being re-written.

Will I miss flash on the ipad? Sure sometimes, but very rarely and I suspect with decreasing frequency as more web designers realise they're alianating a slice of their demographic - a demographic with demonstrably more disposable income from having paid the Apple tax in the first place :)

when we see those figures the analysis will be complete.

The root problem isn't that Flash is "always a hog", it's that it's a proprietary technology controlled by one vendor and so the performance you get is at the whim of that one vendor.

Adobe can claim they can't get hardware acceleration on OS X or Linux, but it's an excuse. There are public APIs for getting accelerated H.264 playback in OS X and open source libraries for doing the same on Linux. The reason there's no hardware acceleration is because (at least prior to the iPhone and the Mac's market resurgence), Adobe didn't think those markets were important enough to spend the resources optimizing.

The desire for an open standard is only partially fueled by poor engineering in some of Adobe's products, but there's a much bigger, much more important issue that HTML5 is trying to address.

:P

P.S. Flash will be a mere footnote in the history technology by ~2012

exactly the reason why flash is fubar, some people actually use linux and would benefit using an standard

Adobe itself already said that they cannot use the Apple's core API and that it is restricted... This is known issue for more than one year. That's why the Adobe is lazy Job's thing is just stupid.

You simply cannot build an open web on closed technology controlled by one agressive little company (Adobe Inc.).

The Flash problem is not Apples. And it is not Adobes either. Thats not where the problem is.

The problem is the people that have been allowed to build the sites. They have been using closed, commercial technology when they should have known better. Like the Toyota CEO these people should publically remorse, cry and ask for forgiveness for their incompetence and lack of vision. And then they should get a job at wal-mart and let more responsible web-builders do the heavy lifting in building websites from now on.

Apple is simply building a web-rendering boxes based on the open standards they are presented with. And a lot of sites doesnt work - this problem is with the sites and the people that make (or influence) the decisions. And this include readwriteweb.com. Shame on you.

You are measuring cpu load, saying that platforms where flash can move it's processing onto the GPU have less cpu load, and then not telling us what the gpu load is?

I'm not saying that is completely invalid, but it seems a bit obvious that platforms where adobe has optimized flash to use less cpu and more gpu would have less cpu usage. The problem is that you make a hasty generalization that flash performs better on that system because of lower cpu usage. That is, simply, and invalid conclusion. To do that, you would have to show an aggregate of the cpu and gpu load. Instead, the only conclusion you can draw is that flash uses less cpu on those platforms. There is a difference which is noticeable by the person using the computer.

Here is even a tutorial, it's so easy, it basically takes seconds to convert from MouseEvents to TransformGestureEvent.
http://gotoandlearn.com/play?id=119

What I did like about this post is Apple's potential threat to not support Flash. I think that's great. I'm sure Google thinks it great as well as they keep selling more and more Androids + whatever else where Apple decides to not support. Cmon Apple, stop supporting Java while you are at it!

H.264 is NOT part of the official HTML5 spec. The codec is still being agreed upon. It is likely that Google's recent purchase of a streaming video company will result in Google open sourcing that company's videos codec in order to mitigate the proprietary and licensing concerns of the other proposed codecs.

Adobe's claims of hardware acceleration not being supported in OS X and Linux are false. Apple exposes hardware acceleration through the Quicktime API, however, Adobe is complaining because they want lower level access to the hardware. They could readily utilize the QT API that Apple has developed for all OS X applications to be able take advantage of.

As for Linux, there are ways, though I can see the lack of "standardization" on Linux being a hurdle. Nevertheless, it is still possible.

To say "HTML5 doesn't run as well as Flash" in some scenarios is also an incorrect statement. That's like saying HTML4 doesn't render correctly because IE6 struggles to do so. HTML5 is a standard. Just as Javascript rendering engines have become more efficient, rendering techniques such as those for the canvas tag will become more efficient.

What's great about HTML5 is that performance is up to the browser developers. Being that HTML5 is a proposed standard, browser developers can readily, freely work on performance issues as necessary. It is yet another front they can compete on, and that's a good thing. With Flash, performance is bound to Adobe, and they clearly have not cared about performance across platforms (and not in general until recently).

Is this part a business move? Absolutely, but it's not to block sites like Hulu. It makes no sense to blanket-sweep the entire Internet's main form of video playback solely to encourage users to purchase from the iTunes Store when most of the videos on the Internet are non-commercial. As @Danny said, sites could easily switch to HTML5 (once the video codec is agreed upon).

This is both a technical and political war. I'm with Apple on this one.

...more of a business-minded one. After all, if you could easily visit Hulu.com (or, overseas, the BBC iPlayer, for example) to stream TV shows and movies, then why would you need to buy them from the iTunes Store?

does not make sense as BBC iPlayer is available on iPhone.

Because the Flash plugin is privately owned it is dependent on Adobe to provide upgrades to all OS's to perform equally. This is not what they've been doing. Except Windows, Flash performs lousy everywhere else. With h.264, it allows an equal playing ground for performance. Adobe hasn't even mentioned what when hardware acceleration will be available for Linux.

I sure it'll be nice to have Flash videos on many smartphones but there will be a price to pay. With that come Flash ads which will also help to murder battery life.

It is a big brands war that's happening now, so we all have to wait and see what's next.

Adobe is in cooperation with many mobile device and platform manufacturers (who are looking forward for lack of iPhone sales), and probably Apple Mobile devices will be only the ones who don't support Flash Player soon. Besides I don't think Adobe will allow Flash to die after all that investments and those smart guys should have a plan as we saw a couple of examples at Adobe MAX 2009.

I guess the better question is how does render video and can/will the process be improved? If they're just pipelining the video to something like ffmpeg and playing the video, do you really expect the performance to be that great? Or does it load up QuickTime on OS X, which isn't the quickest thing to run already?

I guess I'd rather know more about how the runtime and each of the browsers play the video rather than just looking at CPU numbers and calling it a day.

It is case of security!!! Now wonder there is so much of malware for Windows since its APIs provide access to the hardware.

Apple is spearheading HTML5. They own part of H.264. They sanction what apps go on THEIR devices. They control everything. You guys are being dupped in the name of "standards".

Yet Apple won't work with Adobe on improving Flash video on the Mac opening up the required API.

Apple is attempting to put a standard on web design by doing this. It seems they are trying to push developers to focus on building services for Apple's platforms instead of creating technology. The fact that Apple doesn't support any plug-in architecture on iPhone or iPad is more proof that Apple wants control of internet technology.

Sure, Flash is proprietary code, but at least Flash is a runtime environment for software. Software is open in that it allows developers to innovate / invent new technologies provided they deploy on the Flash platform. HTML5 is simply a markup language and does not allow for any innovation. It also requires a web browser to be viewed where as Flash can be deployed across all screens and devices (proven with the imminent release of Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 for mobile).

You can read a bit more about the Apple HTML5 Open Standards issues and rivalries here: http://blog.nothinggrinder.com/id-rather-be-a-woz

The guys livelihood depends on Flash being around. Could you not mention a little bit more about his past involvements in each technology before blindly posting his findings?

Flash is a closed system that vastly underperforms on non-windows PC systems. It is legacy, HTML5 is the future. Why is it the future? Because developers wont have to pay for software to develop HTML5 like they do for flash and they can use the same language and tools they use for the rest of their website work.

Does anyone know how much cpu a js controlled canvas animation uses compared to flash?

There's no "complete rebuild" necessary. Unless one uses an interface that relies 100% on mouse overs (how many of those do you know?), things work perfectly well. And to be quite honest, I've seen a lot of HTML interfaces and menus relying onmouseovers for pulldown. This will also need to be "completely rebuilt", therefore by your logic the ipad shouldn't have HTML.

Your ignorance of the licensing snafu with HTML video and "brutal developer fees" while you forget the main tools are free and that the format needs no licensing just makes your whole "larger issue" point a baffling exaggeration.

Notoriously, since Macromedia and the Flash 3 days, the flash plugin performs worse on the Mac than on Windows. Back then, it was simply because Macromedia had more engineering resources on the Windows version since the majority of usage was on that platform.

I believe "performance" is the scape goat for the reason why Apple doesn't bring Flash on it's iPhone OS. Does anyone remember the presentation of OS X some 10 years ago? Adobe came out as a leading partner for porting its top apps (Photoshop etc) to the new OS. All the apps were pigs and were running on crutches - but dammit - they were running on OS X.

Apple has nothing to benefit from bringing Flash on the iPhone. They are doing quite well dominating the market and having tons of apps/games/video content without Flash. Adobe on the other hand, has all the reasons why they want Flash on that gravy train.

Flash assumes mouse input, will never function properly for touch ( iPad, Android tablets ) without a total rebuild.

Larger issue - Flash is now, will always be, closed proprietary plug-in, with brutal developer fees and licensing. HTML has zero fees, no licensing entanglements and ( I'm just as shocked as any one by this ) will supposedly be supported in IE9

I'm not really into OS X programming, but can't adobe use the Grand Central Dispatc and OpenCL API's that apple put in Snow Leopard?

That said, you've got it exactly right when you say that "Flash's "CPU hogging" may be a contributing factor in Apple's decision to not support the technology on their mobile devices, that's probably not the only reason behind the block". Apple has generic language in the iPhone developer agreement that blocks substantially more than Flash from the App Store:

3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s).

If it weren't for this, Adobe would be able to publish an app that allowed users to browse with Flash. It wouldn't be as efficient as it could be with hardware video decode support, but it would at least be something. There are already alternative browsers on the iPhone (see iCab, for example), but they are required to use the WebKit engine and can't bundle other plugins.

This condition also blocks Java from the App Store, along with numerous other programs, such as emulators for classic computer architectures and programming tools. I used to have a dozen different programming languages on my Palm OS devices, including a full C compiler! None of these would be allowed on the iPhone.

This condition also blocks Firefox and the Opera Mobile browser from the app store, as neither of these browsers uses Apple's JavaScript engine.

Please, mention this condition when covering the issue of Flash. It blocks a wide variety of useful applications from the iPhone. Flash is just a secondary victim.

I'm not saying Flash doesn't have problems, but it's pretty apparent that their "laziness" just isn't such a reality based on what they've been doing on other platforms.