

Flash Player exits Android - equilibrium
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19267140

======
avar
I continue to be amazed at the effort Adobe is going to to make their own
platform irrelevant. They claim to want to focus on "premium copy-protected
video" but do they really think that only targeting that to desktop systems
when mobile adoption is skyrocketing is a good move?

~~~
w0utert
Adobe seems to be pretty much clueless when it comes to Flash if you ask me.
They never bothered to make a solid version of the plugin for Linux and OS X
until the whole Flash-on-iOS debate started and Flash really didn't need more
bad press. Then they tried get Flash on the millions of different hardware
configurations on mobile, even though none of the existing Flash content was
made for touch, none of the handsets had enough power to run most Flash
content well, and all despite all the trouble they had supporting just the 3
major desktop OS-es. All of this effort even though Adobe doesn't make any
money on Flash player at all, only on the authoring tools, which everyone
could see is a dwindling market now that you can do so much on the web without
any plugins.

I think their current strategy on the desktop is not so much 'content-
protected video' (Flash did that 15 years ago already), but high-end gaming.
They have some seriously impressive 3D stuff in the pipeline, which coupled
with Air would finally make some good use of Flash as a platform-independent
way to create games. But my guess is that it's all too little, too late, and
that the market for cross-platform advanced 3D graphics development is pretty
small. The really big guys that would make good use of it already have their
native engines ported to those OS'es that matter, and the small developers
probably don't have the budget to create games that really benefit from the
technology.

It's weird to see how Adobe seems to screw up so often, because they really
make some very good products. The whole 64-bit Adobe CS for OS X debacle comes
to mind, it took them about 5 years too long to transition from Carbon to
Cocoa, even though it was clear from the very first OS X version that Carbon
was going to be replaced and would never have a 64-bit version.

~~~
rm999
I'd say they are more indifferent than clueless. I've read that adobe makes
about 5-10% of its revenue from flash. They can build html5 tools (see
edge.adobe.com) and still retain their core business, and hence profits. I
wouldn't be surprised if they have been removing resources from flash for
years now.

~~~
tsieling
Look at what it took for them to get to embrace HTML tools, all of which are
very recent. Whiney full page ads, screeching blog posts, deleted 'fuck apple'
tweet tantrums. I agree that they're getting into some interesting stuff, but
the path they took to get there was less than dignified. If they're
indifferent now, they started out maybe not as clueless, but petulant beyond
belief.

~~~
jasonlotito
> Look at what it took for them to get to embrace HTML tools, all of which are
> very recent.

Recent? I don't use Adobe tools one way or another, but recent is hardly the
word I'd choose. It's been, what, over a decade now, or near enough to make no
matter[1]. Yes, this starts with Macromedia, but it isn't like Adobe isn't
working with a group to build useful tools. Just because they support their
own format doesn't mean they aren't supporting other formats.

This doesn't mean they _only_ focused on standards compliance. They are a
tools company, and they build tools for people to use.

So, do you really mean HTML?

[1] <http://www.webstandards.org/action/dwtf/> \- Note the section "Release of
Macromedia Dreamweaver MX."

~~~
mietek
He means HTML 5.

------
andybak
Here's the thing.

It initially seemed like a good thing for Android to support Flash but as time
as gone on it's become apparent that the end result is a lot of sites produced
a premium iOS experience and sub-par Flash based one for Android. Whether this
flawed experience was due to limitations in the platform or lack of effort on
behalf of the service I wouldn't like to say but it happened either way.

Hopefully now with Flash unequivocally end-of-life'd (on mobile at the very
least) we might see Android devices being served the same experience as iOS
devices.

~~~
smashing
It was like the OS/2 supporting Windows binaries debacle all over again.

~~~
malkia
Not the same - both were desktop, and running on close hardware.

Contrast this with flash - Lots of flash apps require vast amount of memory,
download not fit for mobile, and most importantly clicks done with mouse. For
all other cases it's fine.

~~~
Evbn
Those problems have almost nothing to do with Flash and everything to do with
complex desktop apps not running on mobile. It is possible to write light
Flash and heavy DHTML (hello Gmail).

------
lmm
The BBC could solve its android problems in a microsecond if it wanted to -
just have it play the same unencrypted stream that they give to iDevices.

~~~
omh
There was (perhaps still is?) a long-running battle as the BBC added extra
protections around the iOS stream and users built various scripts to exploit
this and download episodes. For example, I think that the BBC site uses the
installed certificates to verify that the player is really an iPhone.

Obviously all of this is somewhat pointless, but to work on Android they'd
either have to come up with an equivalent method or turn off one or more
layers of "protection". That's probably difficult politically, if not
technically.

~~~
king_jester
> Obviously all of this is somewhat pointless, but to work on Android they'd
> either have to come up with an equivalent method or turn off one or more
> layers of "protection". That's probably difficult politically, if not
> technically.

I agree about the difficult this poses. Given the kind of wide range of
Android devices, simple content protection might not really be possible.
Verifying a device as Android doesn't really tell you much about the kind of
hardware that it is running on, so for business types this kind of uncertainty
makes them unwilling to try alternatives.

Big Content will not really care about Android until it is easy enough and/or
profitable enough to service. Given that Android doesn't have an easy way to
implement DRM schemes right now, it is unlikely that many companies will be
rushing forward to work on Android until some easier solutions are available.

~~~
omh
The interesting thing is that the BBC were happy to get iPlayer working on the
iPhone originally. That didn't have any meaningful DRM, at least nothing that
couldn't be done to a similar degree on Android.

I suspect that this is because iPhones are "cool" and someone high up just
demanded that it should happen.

~~~
malsme
Weren't iPhones better locked down at that time? I'm thinking it was a
calculated risk. Much like start-ups will do risky things when they first
launch. iPlayer was effectively an internal start-up too.

Targeting iPhone is like supporting a cable company's set top box, so highly
prized because it's straightforward; whereas targeting Android is like
supporting a myriad of smart TVs.

~~~
omh
_Targeting iPhone is like supporting a cable company's set top box, so highly
prized because it's straightforward; whereas targeting Android is like
supporting a myriad of smart TVs._

That's certainly true for supportability. It's easy to test and confirm that
it works on the 2 or 3 iphone models, less so for all the Android devices.
That's potentially bad from a PR point of view.

For drm-esque security it makes little difference though. The 'attack' in this
case was from people running a script and pretending to be an iPhone, not from
people running unauthorised software on iPhones themselves.

------
Newky
This is a huge issue for me that I recently faced when I bought a google
nexus. Flash cannot be found in the jellybean market, and the only way to get
flash working is to install it through apk and use a developemental firefox
build. Even at that, the quality is blurry.

I know flash is dying but unfortunately a number of sites (mostly video sites)
which I frequent regularly have not made a full (if any) conversion meaning
there is a whole sector of the internet that is not accessible from my tablet.

As I bought it as a media consuming device, I expected less of a harsh cut
from Adobe and Google.

~~~
bjonathan
Try Dolphin Browser !

~~~
gcp
Unless I'm missing something, that won't achieve anything as it's using the
built-in WebKit which probably had Flash support removed (otherwise he could
just have used the built-in browser).

I suppose that's why he's using development builds of Firefox - they have
their own engine. Opera would work as well.

------
omaranto
Honestly, I don't think I would have even noticed my tablet didn't have Flash.
I don't have Flash on my Linux laptop (I use Chromium there) and haven't
missed it --its nothing ideological: if I ever need Flash I'll install it
right away. On the Windows netbooks we do have Flash but only because there we
use Chrome instead of Chromium and it comes with Flash. I don't think I
actually use it for anything other than playing video games with my son, which
is not very often (his favorite games now are puzzle apps he plays on an iPod
Touch, not that he plays those that much either).

(Off topic: now that I mentioned it all, it felt like we have a lot of
hardware, but then I realized altogether I payed less than the cost of a high
end laptop for it.)

~~~
ta12121
There do exist people that want to use YouTube and Hulu on Linux, and that's
hard to do without Flash.

~~~
abrahamsen
YouTube on Linux without flash works fine these days.

~~~
DeepDuh
Have they come around offering everything in html5 now? I tried it about a
year ago and it only had a small percentage of the content I watch.

~~~
greyboy
My totally unscientific and anecdotal input is that, for what I end up
watching (5-10 videos/week), it's in the 50-75% range (for HTML5 videos being
available).

Of course, that doesn't mean much and I always have a Windows virtual machine
running for just these scenarios.

~~~
JoshTriplett
For videos unavailable via HTML5, try youtube-dl:
<https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/>

~~~
bsphil
No youtube video is worth that amount of time and energy.

EDIT: That's probably why I can't convince myself to put Linux on my desktop
as the primary OS. I just don't want to take the time to compile github
scripts or scour the Internet for drivers/workarounds/fixes to make all of the
basic computing functions I take for granted on Win7 work.

~~~
greyboy
The link JoshTriplett gave is a simple script, nothing that takes any time to
make it usable after you download it (assuming Python is installed).

But, different strokes for different folks: and choice is usually never a bad
thing. Of course, I learned long ago not to throw the baby out with the
bathwater.

Personally, I have a few Windows virtual machines and an old, cheap Windows XP
laptop around for those rare occasions as well as a Windows 7 dual boot
install for .Net development.

However (again, anecdotally), I've not had a problem with using Linux day-to-
day. Nothing has been difficult and I appreciate the power the CLI affords me.

~~~
bsphil
I run a Linux VM in Windows on my desktop actually, but it's my gaming machine
too. Last time I gave it a shot as a full install, I couldn't for the life of
me get a brand new USB wifi adapter to work in Ubuntu. All the searching on
the topic seemed to indicate that 64-bit users are screwed (which was me), and
32-bit users needed to use a driver emulator and dig through generic broadcom
drivers to test.

I gave up.

~~~
Ralith
It's often a good idea to research how well hardware will work for your
intended use before you pay money for it.

~~~
bsphil
I did. It serves me very well on my Windows machine.

------
chimi
Flash still works on my HP TouchPad, but it's not that good. Video almost
always lags the audio which makes them awful to watch and Video playback is
the _only_ think that matters with flash anymore and it fails at that so, I
really see no purpose for it. I wish all the sites would just adopt native
video.

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nicholassmith
Flash is always going to have a place on the desktop, but as a developer
having to make a choice between Flash & HTML5 or just HTML5 is going to be
pretty simple for a big chunk of purposes.

Lets hope Adobe focus on HTML5 tools.

~~~
GFischer
"Flash is always going to have a place on the desktop"

What for? Any developer for Flash now sees the sign on the wall. It will not
die off, but it will become niche/irrelevant.

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/243529/the_beginning_of_the_e...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/243529/the_beginning_of_the_end_of_adobe_flash_player.html)

"The things Adobe is working on for desktops--advanced 3D gaming and premium
copy-protected video--already exist in mobile through native apps and HTML5.
As mobile and desktop platforms merge, Flash Player will get overtaken."

~~~
nicholassmith
There's still things you can do in Flash that can't be achieved in HTML5, so
until there's the ability to layer ad's in videos effectively for YouTube or
strap DRM into the streams Flash will be a goto choice.

~~~
Evbn
Div with opacity <1 , that is an overlay, isn't it?

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mathieuh
Android users get screwed over with the iPlayer app. Not everyone wants to
install Flash (and now no one can even if they want to), yet for some reason
they feel need to serve the video in a different way to the perfectly fine iOS
stream.

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jonaphin
Adobe took the pragmatic approach. The HTML standard is maturing to the point
where Flash will become redundant technology sooner rather than later for
regular media consumption. Pulling the cord on Flash Mobile is the right thing
to do. Seriously, which relevant company still builds anything for mobile on
Flash?

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rjzzleep
well nice going google, first effectively kill or setback html5 video by
torpedoing everyone with their anti h264 campaign and then get f*ed up the bum
by them.

(here's a guy who 2 years ago said that flash is effectively dead long live
html5 video)

pps. i won't really miss flash. but i do miss the time where every site had
h264 vids up

