

Walt Mossberg Tells Adobe CEO To His Face That Flash Sucks On Android - sigzero
http://www.cultofmac.com/walt-mossberg-tells-adobe-ceo-to-his-face-that-flash-sucks-on-android/98231#more-98231

======
blinkingled
The only place where Flash works very decent is on Windows with IE. It kind of
bogs down on even bigger power desktops and laptops. It absolutely blows on OS
X for whatever reason.

That said the point of Flash on Android is not to have guaranteed high
performance, fluent apps that work like native ones. That's an impossible goal
- for one, Adobe cannot control what kind of Flash/AS code all of the
developers out on the web will write.

And secondly on my Xoom with 3.1 - Flash works great enough - no stutter or
crashes. Does the job. So as more decent hardware comes out and they optimize
Flash even more it will become better.

This whole cult like insanity people have created for and against Flash is
mind blowing - it's there you can use it if you want, don't if you don't. No
one is forcing anything down your throats folks. For me I will take reasonably
working Flash instead of not working at all.

Oh and before you beat up the HTML5 drum - it's not there yet and it's not the
absolute reality of the web today.

~~~
chamakits
I think what people take issue with (at least its what I take issue with) is
that Adobe is trying to pretend its an open standard of the web, that helps
push the web forward when in reality it does the contrary. For starters, its
not an open standard, its an executable program (or plugin). It isn't a
standard left up to be implemented by whoever is interested, its controlled by
the one and only master implementation by Adobe. A lot of websites like to
depend on Flash in some way or the other, be it for ads, video, or some
functionality, and more often than not it makes the experience unpleasant.

On the other hand HTML5 is an open standard and thats all it is. Its basically
an agreement of what the technology takes as input, and puts out as output. If
you want to implement the technology, by all means, go ahead. If group A
implements it better than group B, then people have the choice of using the
group A technology. Group B will then have to improve their implementation if
they are interested in staying competitive, and we all win. That to me is key,
the option of using a standard, implemented by different people to make it
strive, not a binary distributed and leaving you up to the whim of the company
behind it.

FYI: You spoke of windows and Mac OS X, but didn't mention Linux (probably
because you haven't tried it, the same way I haven't tried it in Mac OS X.)
Flash absolutely blows in Linux as well. I'm not talking just on the gnash and
open source flash players, I mean the Adobe closed source build. It stutters,
the keyboard input detection is abysmal, it leaks memory all the time, and
crashes eventually from all the memory leaks.

~~~
potatolicious
Flash is _ridiculous_ on OS X. It leaks memory like a sieve - I once left a
few tabs open overnight with Flash ads and your various bits of Flash-based
internet detritus, and by the time I woke up my machine was thrashing madly
until I manually killed Flash. Its performance is also _piss_ poor even when
it isn't leaking your RAM all over the floor.

Not to mention it breaks a lot of fundamental browser interactivity - want
something to render on top of your Flash applet? FUCK YOU YOU CAN'T.

Scrolling happily along with your mousewheel on a page, then you hit a Flash
applet. While your cursor is over the applet, your scroll wheel stops working.
Why? God knows, because Adobe hates us and Flash is the greatest bit of
trolling ever.

These aren't new issues - these have been around since the very first days of
Flash. Adobe simply has no interest in bringing usability up to the standards
of the 21st century.

Nor security for that matter - one of my main objections to Flash is that it
conveniently circumvents all of the nice security features your browser has
painstakingly built into your experience. Incognito mode? Flash won't respect
it. Don't like cookies? Well, screw you, Flash will keep its own equivalent
anyways. Nice, sandboxed JavaScript runtime? Well, Flash does its own thing
(and has its own bugs and security holes... many, many security holes)...

I trust Google, Mozilla, et al to do a reasonably good job protecting me
online. I do not trust Adobe - both due to their lack of regard for basic
product quality (both stability and usability), as well as their poor security
track record of having more holes than a beehive.

If third parties could actually implement a runtime (one that, say, wouldn't
_suck_ ) then maybe Flash would be a good idea. At least there would be a way
to work around a single vendor's supremely shitty implementation.

I don't deny the need and desire for a highly interactive technology like what
Flash _wants_ to be (and sometimes is)... but this is not the answer.

~~~
danenania
There are some types of apps that are in demand and flash is well equipped to
build. Users don't care about any of this stuff. They just want something that
works and is useful or fun. It doesn't have to be an arch philosophical issue.
When people like you rant about flash, it just demonstrates you've never built
the sort of app that flash excels at. Sure, flash has its problems, but there
are some tasks that javascript simply can't do, or can't do nearly as well as
flash. Flash has done some things wrong, but it's also done a lot of things
right and helped pushed the web forward. Get off your soapbox!

~~~
gaius
I don't think that's true. Find an ordinary user who _likes_ Flash intros on
websites, or who likes attention-seeking Flash ads disturbing them while
reading an article.

The only thing that Flash is used for that real people (as opposed to
marketing twerps) actually like is cheesy little games, and they can be done
perfectly well without Flash these days.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Simply not true. Gmail calling is not possibly in HTML/js.

There are a lot of cool websites that use Flash for more than games and video
these days. Qwiki won TechCrunch Disrupt last year. Beatlab is a super cool
music creation app.

And Flash will likely always be the standard for DRM Video on the web. Being
an open standard, HTML5 can never include DRM.

I see Flash's place is as a stopgap for features that haven't been
standardized/implemented yet. It does those very well.

~~~
daniel02216
Gmail calling uses Google's own plugin, not Flash. And they just open sourced
it and intend for browser makers to integrate it into their browsers.
Hopefully it will be possible to do video calling in HTML soon.

------
varunsrin
This is a really poorly written, fanboyish article - not saying anything about
whether or not flash is good, but do we really need articles like this one on
HN?

 _"Watch the smug get slapped right off of Narayen’s face after he laughably
tries to claim that contrary to Steve Jobs’s argument that Flash is a dead
technology, it’s currently running on 130 million Android devices."_

~~~
Entaroadun
Agreed. Definitely did not see what the author was talking about there, which
leads me to suspect he started watching the video with a strong bias in mind.

~~~
Dove
I clicked through hoping for some technical content about how Flash is doing
on mobile platforms. I got an analysis of a facial reaction in an interview.

That's pretty disappointing. So here I am in the HN comment thread hoping
someone will say something interesting and technical.

------
fragsworth
I think by far the biggest problem Adobe has to deal with is that there are so
many inexperienced software developers who have taken up writing Flash
applications. These new developers' lack of knowledge is what causes these
applications to have poor performance, not any particular inefficiencies in
the Flash platform itself.

It probably stems from the fact that the development studio is designed more
for artists than developers, allowing artists to toy with adding functionality
to their creations but not really giving them the years of training it
requires to understand performance implications.

Adobe can't really make this claim, even though they are fully aware of it,
because it is never good to badmouth your customers. So they are left with
taking the heat for them instead.

Contrast this to the native Android or iOS development environments which
cater to experienced software developers.

~~~
michaelpinto
When it comes to ActionScript the problem isn't so much creatives trying to
write code (they'll do stuff in the score) but more self taught programmers
who may not be that experienced. Although you could level the same charge at
other languages like PHP that attract production people who are looking to do
more cut-and-paste than anything else. Another issue is that Flash projects
can be very client driven, and more often than not advertising clients don't
always grok tech issues.

Although I feel that Adobe has to take some credit for the structure and
evolution of Flash. Adobe has always been more about adding 50 average
features to sell a software suite than to focus on better/faster/stable.
Unlike Microsoft who owns the OS or Apple who makes hardware their core
business is selling new tools, so there is no "bigger picture". The result is
bloatware.

~~~
cpeterso
Most Adobe software is bloated (Creative Suite and Acrobat, in particular),
but I don't think it is fair to call Flash bloated. The Macromedia Flash dev
team has always been very conscious about Flash's download size, allocating
code size budgets for new features.

Here are the historical file sizes of the Flash Player installer (compressed
.exe for Windows ActiveX Control):

    
    
      * Flash Player  2   (1997) = 0.2 MB *
      * Flash Player  3   (1998) = 0.2 MB *
      * Flash Player  4   (1999) = 0.3 MB **
      * Flash Player  5   (2000) = 0.3 MB **
      * Flash Player  6   (2002) = 0.5 MB ***
      * Flash Player  7   (2003) = 0.6 MB ***
      * Flash Player  8   (2005) = 0.8 MB ****
      * Flash Player  9   (2006) = 1.5 MB ******** (first Flash release after Adobe acquired Macromedia)
      * Flash Player 10   (2008) = 1.9 MB **********
      * Flash Player 10.1 (2010) = 2.7 MB **************
      * Flash Player 10.2 (2011) = 2.7 MB **************
      * Flash Player 10.3 (2011) = 2.9 MB ***************

~~~
michaelpinto
By bloated I mean interface complexity rather than physical size. Once upon a
time Adobe really understood interface design, but these days their apps feel
like a total mess to me. The point of every upgrade seems to be to add a stray
feature and move some buttons around. And then they have to make programs like
bridge that talk to other programs.

And then the programs keep asking to be updated every five minutes like a
kitty that's hungry. In fact I'm looking at my CS3 icons vs my CS5 icons in my
dock and even the new icons looked bloated. In fact even the ordering process
of upgrading CS is bloated —- it was as if I had to read a manual to figure
what the differences were and what the upgrade cost. And I say this as someone
who has used their software since Photoshop 1.0 and grew up in PageMaker
(which to be fair was Aldus).

And did I mention that it took me longer to install the CS suite than to
upgrade to Windows 7??? And I didn't even install all every package (and it
still put code from some of those programs on my harddrive).

------
olivercameron
This argument has been played to death, and Adobe never seem to let it go. The
fact is, Apple owes Adobe nothing, and not including Flash was never a dig at
Adobe as a company, but a choice that Apple made about Flash as a software
package. Adobe seem to have taken it super personally, but the truth is that
Flash on mobile devices just doesn't work in it's current form (speed and
usability issues). Steve has said multiple times that the door isn't closed on
Flash, they just need Adobe to prove it will perform like Apple expects.

~~~
brisance
Not exactly. Apple changed their developer agreement such that programs that
weren't developed using the iOS SDK weren't allowed on the App Store. They
reversed the decision only later on, and now you can develop on Adobe AIR and
have the LLVM-derived compiler (irony?) output code for iOS.

~~~
olivercameron
With all of Flash's security issues, I am not surprised Apple doesn't let
native Flash apps on their own store.

~~~
MartinCron
I think the security issues for flash in-browser (mobile safari) are more
troublesome than security issues for apps in the app store.

Apple can (in theory) validate that the things going through the app store
aren't total malware. In-browser? You're on your own, for good or for bad.

~~~
pyre
Truly. We should disable JavaScript as well. Who knows what AJAX
vulnerabilities might be in mobile Safari? Apple can't vet them all for
malware. On that token, Apple can't vet all websites to make sure that their
content doesn't misrepresent Apple as a company. They should probably just
trash Mobile Safari altogether.

~~~
spicyj
But at least Apple can fix bugs when it finds them in its own products,
whereas if there's a giant Flash security hole it can do nothing to fix it.

------
lylejohnson
The actual quote from Mossberg is much more polite than the submission title
would suggest: "I have yet to test a single [Android phone] where Flash works
really well. I’m sorry. They struggle on those Android devices."

~~~
zmmmmm
Why do I suspect Mossberg's statement could be reduced to?

 _I have yet to test a single [Android phone]_

Ok, cheap shot, but I really think he's not actually tried it on high end
phones with _reasonable_ flash apps that are _designed_ for mobile use. Yes,
if you go to cnn.com which fully expects to be running on a desktop it
stutters. It stutters on some desktop computers too. But go to the mobile
games sites that specialize in Flash games for phones - and many of them are
great.

~~~
staunch
His entire argument for Flash is that you don't have to rewrite your app for
different platforms.

~~~
zmmmmm
No. You're mixing in a different definition of "platform" here to include
hardware profile. A flash app designed to run well on one mobile device will
probably run well on other mobile devices with little or no modification. On
the other hand a flash app designed to run well on a desktop probably is not
going to run well on mobile hardware. But then probably neither will any app
built on any technology that was designed to make use of desktop level
hardware.

~~~
zmmmmm
Well, it's interesting to see my comment sink down to negative territory.
Here's the exact quote from Narayen in the linked article:

> The value proposition Flash has is that we allow people to author programs
> once and get them to as many devices as possible

He says "devices", clearly indicating that he is arguing the value proposition
is to deploy across multiple phone (or mobile device) platforms, not some kind
of write-once-run-anywhere proposition that works across desktop and mobile.

~~~
urbanjunkie
He's used the phrase "multiple devices" before, and he's clearly referring to
more than mobile phones.

In this interview from last year he states [1]

"The world is emerging where there are multiple devices [...] to access the
internet

Mobile devices are certainly a big part of it, tablet devices will be a part
of it, televisions and PCs..."

the more these platforms adopt flash, they won't have to do anything else. It
will just work"

Seems pretty clear to me.

[1]
[http://www.flashstreamworks.com/archive.php?post_id=12726539...](http://www.flashstreamworks.com/archive.php?post_id=127265398)

------
watty
You know what doesn't suck? Having the option to run it when I want. I don't
use it often but there have been several instances where I was able to access
web content that iOS users could not.

~~~
nupark2
Personally, I'd rather have the vendors kill off Flash, forcing the web to
switch to alternatives, resulting in an environment where I never need (or
want) to use Flash.

I'm even willing to suffer slightly for this in the meantime -- even if that
means you can access Flash (poorly) on an Android device, and I can't. Apple's
position has already resulted in a fairly dramatic decrease in the number of
flash-only websites, and I won't cry if I see it disappear entirely.

~~~
tensor
The problem with this notion is that everyone is assuming that HTML5 +
Javascript is going to be somehow drastically better than flash when it
matures.

I have not seen any technical arguments as for why this would be. I imagine
that when all the inexperienced flash programmers move over to HTML5, we will
end up with even slower HTML5 based animated ads and an even more fragmented
browsing experience due to the lack of standards for video and audio. Worse,
since these technologies can be more thoroughly integrated into websites, it
will be far harder to block them.

~~~
msbarnett
>The problem with this notion is that everyone is assuming that HTML5 +
Javascript is going to be somehow drastically better than flash when it
matures.

> I have not seen any technical arguments as for why this would be.

That's because you're looking for a technical reason when the real reason lies
in strategic interests and manpower concerns.

If I'm Apple or HP or FoobarCorp, and I'm readying the brand new iWidget or
TouchFob or FooPad, running my OS and browser, and relying on Flash for rich
web content, if there are performance or stability issues, I have to punt them
to Adobe and wait in line behind Flash for Windows, Flash for OS X, Flash for
Android, and whatever other priorities Adobe has in front of me before they
allocate manpower to my problems.

But if rich web content is built in HTML5 + JS then I can send my engineers
into our Webkit fork/Gecko engine/IE-wrapper/telnet-front-end to make things
work right on our bizarro CPU or GPU or whatever it is that Adobe would have
done a piss-poor job of optimizing for.

Relying on a single choke point to deliver good performance to everyone has
failed miserably. Independent, self-interested groups are more likely to do a
better job of each optimizing HTML5 performance best for their own needs.

~~~
ThomPete
I fail to see how that is addressing the problem stated.

The fact is that HTML5+JS is miles behind proper performance let alone cross
browser compatibility.

------
bad_user
You know, as much as I don't like Apple, this time I've got to hand it to them
as they were right -- I have an Android and I love it, but the browser plugins
are disabled (since Samsung thought it would be a good idea for Flash to be
part of the Firmware, and I can't uninstall it).

Flash makes your browser unusable, because it consumes a lot of battery and
makes browsing slower. And it's doing this without you even noticing, since
many websites include either crappy Flash commercials or at least some .swf
that sets Flash cookies for better tracking.

The sad part is that the first 2 days I blamed my phone for the piss-poor
battery life, but after I disabled Flash and uninstalled Skype my phone's
battery now lasts for 3 days instead of 6 hours and the browser runs smoothly.

------
rodh257
I've had good experiences with flash on my Galaxy S, mainly flash streaming, I
don't play flash games. I've used it on a number of occasions to watch streams
of cricket matches.

Much better than not having it at all.

------
kylec
Android's not the only platform Flash sucks on. That video clip was freezing
and choppy on my 2010 MacBook Pro.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I had similar issues with flash video until I re-enabled hardware
acceleration. Right Click the video > Settings > Enable Hardware Acceleration.

Hope it helps.

------
tomkarlo
Good for Uncle Walt. There aren't enough reporters out there who call CEOs out
on the truth of his comments. Right or wrong, it's more interesting for Walt
to say his view on this as someone who looks at a _lot_ of Android phones than
just let that statement pass unchallenged.

------
TwoBit
Flash may run poorly on mobile devices, but doesn't the equivalent HTML 5 run
worse? It runs worse on all other platforms.

~~~
watty
It's clearly not about which one runs better, has the better development
tools, or best support across browsers and operating systems. It's about Flash
being (semi)closed, requiring a plugin, and being owned by Adobe.

~~~
tensor
I agree, but sadly the prevailing notion held by the majority of developers
and the public seems to be that HTML5/JS is somehow significantly better than
Flash in terms of technology. In this sense, Apple's deceptive marketing
strategy has been a success.

~~~
Argorak
Is it deceptive? I remember iterating through minor versions of Flash just to
get Adobe Connect (a product of the very same company, just to emphase) to run
without crashing on OS X. Yes, Flash on OS X is horrible mess, even more on
Linux. I vastly improved my browsing experience on OS X by actually following
Grubers advice and only have one Browser with Flash enabled (Chrome). And even
there, it is the single point of crashes(tm).

So this notion is not very surprising.

------
brisance
Mossberg missed a chance to ask him about the other ugly side of Flash: its
security vulnerabilities.

~~~
joelhooks
Wouldn't that be something that could be asked of any sort of technology
platform?

~~~
Locke1689
In practice Adobe has had very poor security response. Claiming that all
technologies are equally vulnerable to security concerns is like comparing
qmail and Adobe Reader and saying the same thing.

------
kingkilr
I wish someone would tell him that it sucks on every other platform as well.

------
loso
I have an Android phone and I have never had any problems with Flash. And I am
far from a Flash cheerleader. It seems that most of the Flash hatred comes
from Linux and Mac users. If it sucks on their platforms then I can truly
understand that. Even on Windows it could be a lot better. But it is not an
evil technology. Just poorly implemented at times.

Every time the argument comes up I feel as if there is a section of people
trying to convince others that Adobe is the devil. Flash has its place on the
web until something comes along that can properly replace it. HTML5/CSS3 is
just not there yet but it soon will be.

------
teyc
Speaking from a technical standpoint, since Flash is a VM, and it's running on
top of Dalvik, wouldn't performance necessarily be poor?

If anyone knows a little more about how Flash works on the mobile, please
share.

~~~
av500
Flash runs as a plugin inside the webkit based browser and webkit is native
code in android since day one.

that also means that you cannot play local .SWF files on android unless you
manage to get them inside a web page...

~~~
acqq
Flash can't run natively "on webkit." Flash file contains bytecode, which has
to be either fully interpreted or JIT-ed. It has to be done on mobiles too.
The interpreter or JIT-er has to be native. Writing native JIT-ers is hard, to
have a native interpreter you can write it in C and recompile it for every
platform but it will be significantly slower. In short, it's not easy to make
the Flash fast on a new CPU. And no, Webkit is not a CPU.

------
krogsgard
I just like that Narayen started his career at Apple.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shantanu_Narayen#Career>

------
iqster
Here's the video: [http://www.9to5mac.com/70293/adobe-ceo-responds-to-steve-
job...](http://www.9to5mac.com/70293/adobe-ceo-responds-to-steve-jobs-on-
flash/)

------
paulrademacher
The video froze on my Macbook Air.

~~~
Create
...this is why Adobe and Qualcomm would want a deal to add hw support to their
ARM fork.

------
ENOTTY
I ran Robot Unicorn through Flash just fine on my Motorola Droid.

------
cletus
Frankly, I'm tired of the whining about Flash and the (largely Apple-hating)
enablers and apologists for Adobe's incompetence.

Fact is, all Adobe had to do to "win" this PR war was jailbreak and iPhone,
developer a version of Flash for it and then show it off to anyone and
everyone who wants to see what a great experience it can be.

Instead, Adobe would rather just lie back and say "there's no point in
trying", which is an obnoxious mix of laziness, incompetence and arrogance.

What's worse is the number of people who have bought into their BS.

Does Apple want Flash on iOS? Probably not. But with good reason. And who
really cares? Producing a compelling Flash experience on mobile (something
that STILL doesn't exist, even on Android) would've gone a long way to forcing
their hand.

