Flash Crash
Seems like everyone is all excited for Flash on phones. I don’t get it personally. I mean, we have Skyfire, no? And do we really need Flash? That’s all for another day, but getting back to native Flash. Seems like Adobe was showing off what it had to offer on a Nexus One and here’s what was reported:
Here’s what happened: On his Mac, Ryan pulled up a site called Eco Zoo. It is, seemingly, a pretty intense example of Flash development — full of 3D rendering, rich interactions, and cute little characters. Then, he pulled up the same thing on his Nexus One. The site’s progress bar filled in and the 3D world appeared for a few seconds before the browser crashed. Ryan said (paraphrasing), “Whoops! Well, it’s beta, and this is an intense example — let’s try it again.” He tried it again and got the same result. So he said to the audience, “Well, this one isn’t going to work, but does anyone have a Flash site they’d like to see running?” Someone shouted out “Hulu.” Ryan said, “Hulu doesn’t work,” and then wrapped up his demo, telling people if they wanted to try more sites they could find him later and he’d let them play with his Nexus One.
Adobe should probably know their beta limitations before they do another demo that ends up like this…
via ZDNet
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I’m with you on Flash on phones. Don’t know why something like Skyfire gets very popular pretty much just for doing quasi-flash. The only time I’ve wanted Flash on a phone was to make sure I got the code right on some of my sites with Flash video to spit out another format to those without Flash. Then I’d keep it disabled with Opera Mobile once they went flash to keep things loading faster and filter out the crap.
I’m disappointed, perplexed rather, in Google’s aggressively buddying-up with Adobe. Maybe that relationship warmed up because of the my enemy’s enemy thing, Apple versus both of them. Between Apple and Google (Youtube specifically), that would be some heavy muscle on web developers to either jump to HTML5 completely, particularly for video purposes and whatever else HTML5 does better or as good, or accommodate visitors with software supporting one or the other with some kind of autodetection thing that when possible would defer to HTML5.
Last time I checked Youtube does offer HTML5 but it’s opt-in, not an auto-detect thing, pretty beta, and for whatever reason going with h.264, another thing they could leverage if they wanted to toward a more open codec. Once you opt-in, doesn’t seem to support all videos, but here’s one. Only works in Safari or Chrome, no Firefox, no Opera and of course, no IE. No surprise there with Microsoft but if they used Ogg Theora then Firefox and Opera would be in the house. What’s up with that.
I took a forty hour crash course in Flash and the culmination of it was phone stuff, showing us how with Adobe software you can see whatever it is you’re trying to do will look like on almost every phone out there in different conditions, different settings, screen brightness, simulation of sunlight and so on, leaving us with a Coming soon pitch about CS5 and iphones. Guess not, professor. But based on what I learned in that week, gotta say that I am a little nervous that Adobe will make it too easy for Joe Guywhotookacrashcourseinflashorpiratedafordummiesbook to stamp out some crappy porn animated wallpaper and squeeze it through trigger happy application market quality control screeners. Need those guys on the ball, hope they don’t drop it, hope they don’t get excited at this being an opportunity to make the total app count fly up faster than it should. I like the entry barrier of having to learn Java to enter the clubhouse. Flash, too low a barrier.
The only good thing, to me, about Flash and Android, both in browser support and in whatever else they’re going to do (like getting CS5 to stamp out Android applications), is that, I imagine, there are a chunk of people out there on the fence about which way to go when buying their next phone, people who have no idea what HTML5 is, and hearing that the Google phones can do Flash and Apple phones still cannot will tip them over the edge, and I like my guys winning the market share pissing contests. Which reminds me, now’s a good time to offer you to pay up on our $50 bet early to save face down the road.
Look out RIM, we’re gunning for you next.
… most of which are /affordable/.
And really who dis? You’re criticizing Google for not making an exclusive agreement with the carrier that is the butt of 3G jokes to sell its phones? How are those unlimited plans treating you? Did they mention up front that they’d cripple your ipad’s media software to use ludicrously low bitrates when not on wifi?
So Google’s a swinger, carrier wise, and in addition to getting their Android phones on the shelves of dealers all over the world, they’re even selling some carrier unlocked, with or without contracts on a couple, straight from their site. Man, what a disaster for Apple customers it would have been if they didn’t get so drunk with AT&T right before they broke out their fountain pens and inked a *five* year deal.
End of the day more people are saying hello to Android today than the Apple software. And the next day more people will hear about Android taking that lead and some of those people step faster in the right direction while the natural trend of people gravitating toward the better product keeps on churning. This was not a resistance barrier Google just broke through but a barrier to climb up onto a catapult.
I rest my case.
Wow, really Simmons? You’re gloating over selling a couple more phones than Apple with all twentysomething Android devices combined, most of which are crap and not even running the latest Android, on several carriers versus a small handful of ours on one single carrier?
Catapult? Overstate much?
Gotta hand it to the Google kool-aid chuggers to cite their own advertising company’s server data in their claims of being responsible for the most bits transmitted over the web. Doesn’t make me want to question from whatever sources your scrounging up this bs, not at all.
Well enjoy your fifteen minutes, don’t let the door hit you on the ass when the iphone HD comes out.
Dumbass.