I just don't understand all the Flash hate going on.
I can't remember the last time Flash killed my browser or OS. It's been at least 5 years, probably more.
Flash was designed to compensate for the deficiencies of the web. That's great. Now that web technologies are finally catching up, Flash is no longer as necessary as it once was. That's great.
So now we find ourselves in a transitionary period where HTML5 and friends are able to replace Flash in almost all situations. That's great. And for those remaining use cases where only Flash will do, well, it's available on all major desktop platforms. That's great. If you want to do something on mobile that HTML5 and friends don't support but Flash does, well, you're SOL thanks mostly to Steve. That's not so great. That's less innovative apps due to functionality denied.
So where does this leave us? Flash is a mature technology that has served its purpose well over the years, and has started to gradually fade into the twilight as open protocols fill the same gaps it was designed to fill. Go ahead and use HTML5 if it works for you; that's what it's designed for. But why all the hating on Flash?
I'm guessing you use Windows. Flash is kind of OK on Windows. It blows elsewhere. It drains my MacBook Pro's battery, it makes my computer uncomfortably hot, it still hangs and crashes more than all the other software on my computer put together, and it has a much higher propensity than HTML5 solutions to break standard things like Services, bookmarking, right-click and the back button.
It runs fine on my macbook pro. It drains the battery in some instances, yeah, but then again so do heavy HTML5 sites like turntable (which is currently taking 50% cpu, the most power hungry process out of EVERYTHING I'm running, all for playing music and displaying some 2-dimensional sprites and a chat room).
What I really notice is that all of these web technologies designed to improve the user experience chew through multiple orders of magnitude more CPU than a native app. 2-4x more I could understand. Hell, I'd even settle for 10x, but when it's going over 100x for poster-child quality HTML5 or Flash sites (which are not by any means impressive compared to a native app), something's definitely wrong.
On my unibody MacBook, Flash can peg the CPU pretty easily if I'm not running FlashBlock. It may be more that I leave many tabs open. I used to just use Chrome when I really needed to see a Flash-heavy site, but recent releases have much worse performance than before. For example, a video in Flash will use 200% CPU under Chrome, but < 100% under Safari or Firefox.
And it runs fine on my 64-bit Linux box. Crashes are incredibly infrequent compared to what is generally reported on threads like this--I don't even remember when it happened last. Probably sometime in the last year.
Quote: "This one should be pretty apparent, but given the fragmentation of the mobile market, and the fact that one of the leading mobile platforms (Apple’s iOS) was not going to allow the Flash Player in the browser, the Flash Player was not on track to reach anywhere near the ubiquity of the Flash Player on desktops."
Comments
I just don't understand all the Flash hate going on.
I can't remember the last time Flash killed my browser or OS. It's been at least 5 years, probably more.
Flash was designed to compensate for the deficiencies of the web. That's great. Now that web technologies are finally catching up, Flash is no longer as necessary as it once was. That's great.
So now we find ourselves in a transitionary period where HTML5 and friends are able to replace Flash in almost all situations. That's great. And for those remaining use cases where only Flash will do, well, it's available on all major desktop platforms. That's great. If you want to do something on mobile that HTML5 and friends don't support but Flash does, well, you're SOL thanks mostly to Steve. That's not so great. That's less innovative apps due to functionality denied.
So where does this leave us? Flash is a mature technology that has served its purpose well over the years, and has started to gradually fade into the twilight as open protocols fill the same gaps it was designed to fill. Go ahead and use HTML5 if it works for you; that's what it's designed for. But why all the hating on Flash?
I'm guessing you use Windows. Flash is kind of OK on Windows. It blows elsewhere. It drains my MacBook Pro's battery, it makes my computer uncomfortably hot, it still hangs and crashes more than all the other software on my computer put together, and it has a much higher propensity than HTML5 solutions to break standard things like Services, bookmarking, right-click and the back button.
It runs fine on my macbook pro. It drains the battery in some instances, yeah, but then again so do heavy HTML5 sites like turntable (which is currently taking 50% cpu, the most power hungry process out of EVERYTHING I'm running, all for playing music and displaying some 2-dimensional sprites and a chat room).
What I really notice is that all of these web technologies designed to improve the user experience chew through multiple orders of magnitude more CPU than a native app. 2-4x more I could understand. Hell, I'd even settle for 10x, but when it's going over 100x for poster-child quality HTML5 or Flash sites (which are not by any means impressive compared to a native app), something's definitely wrong.
On my unibody MacBook, Flash can peg the CPU pretty easily if I'm not running FlashBlock. It may be more that I leave many tabs open. I used to just use Chrome when I really needed to see a Flash-heavy site, but recent releases have much worse performance than before. For example, a video in Flash will use 200% CPU under Chrome, but < 100% under Safari or Firefox.
It blows elsewhere.
And it runs fine on my 64-bit Linux box. Crashes are incredibly infrequent compared to what is generally reported on threads like this--I don't even remember when it happened last. Probably sometime in the last year.
It blows on every Ubuntu Linux machine I run as well - though the Flash-Aid Firefox plugin certainly helped.
You seem to think that the entire mobile platform runs iOS. Apple only has something like 15% marketshare.
"You seem to think that the entire mobile platform runs iOS."
It's silly to assume that someone on HN would be unaware of the players in the mobile marketplace.
Adobe themselves said that Apple's move to block them proved to be the clincher: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2011/11/11/clarifications-o...
Quote: "This one should be pretty apparent, but given the fragmentation of the mobile market, and the fact that one of the leading mobile platforms (Apple’s iOS) was not going to allow the Flash Player in the browser, the Flash Player was not on track to reach anywhere near the ubiquity of the Flash Player on desktops."