

Motorola Xoom will ship without Flash support - mjfern
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/21/motorola-xoom-will-ship-without-flash-support-on-february-24th/

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valjavec
Flash is a technology that had it's best days in PC era.

Probably noone can imagine YouTube or banner ads without Flash technology
nowdays, but new devices are coming to market where Flash isn't best choice
anymore. Just as floppy disks served world in it's days but are now replaced
with USB keys or broadband connections and clouds storages so it looks like
Flash had it's days and will be replaced by other solutons (like H.264 codec).

Putting Flash on Android tablets seems like they want to compete "has flash"
VS. iPad's "does not have Flash", but that doesn't really serve to users.

It goes the way nature has invented long time ago and it's called evolution -
where old dies (even very best of it's time) away and new takes over.

~~~
mattmanser
Usually you replace an encumbent technology with a better version rather than
taking ten steps back. Evolution is about progress, not regression.

The truth is, Adobe's engineering incompetence aside, Flash is a lot, lot
better to make programs with than HTML5. Silverlight is a lot, lot better to
make programs with than HTML5. Java, C#, Python, Ruby, C++ are all, as a
whole, a lot, lot better programming languages than Javascript.

Imagine replacing DVDs with 8 tracks. That's what's happening. It's a perverse
scenario, but I can't understand how you can say that it's evolution,
evolution is about progress, not regression.

It's Adobe's own fault for neglecting the Mac and Linux for so long, crashing
browsers, etc., added with the general menace that PDFs are too and
Silverlight was just too late, but let's not pretend the technology's better.
It's pretty pathetic and the snail's pace progress of html5 is embarrassing.

And where's ECMAScript 5? What the hell has happened to that, it seems to have
dropped off the planet!

~~~
mayank
> The truth is, Adobe's engineering incompetence aside, Flash is a lot, lot
> better to make programs with than HTML5. Silverlight is a lot, lot better to
> make programs with than HTML5. Java, C#, Python, Ruby, C++ are all, as a
> whole, a lot, lot better programming languages than Javascript.

Your comment isn't very coherent.

\-- Other than the fact that "better" is entirely subjective, how many modern
web applications in widespread use are based on Flash rather than JS+HTML5?
Gmail, facebook, twitter, google docs: no flash. Youtube: flash only for the
video codec, not functionality.

\-- "ActionScript is a dialect of ECMAScript":
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript> So what language features were you
thinking of that make ActionScript/Flash better than Javascript?

\-- Security holes in Flash vs. HTML5? hmm...

\-- HTML5 on 64bit Linux? Check. Flash? still buggy.

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moeffju
The Motorola Milestone advertised it was "Flash ready" on the packaging. That
was in mid 2009. I bought the phone and have been waiting on Motorola to
deliver the necessary upgrades ever since. Their release date for Android 2.2
Froyo for the Milestone changed, what, ten times - from mid 2010 to June to
August to September to Q4 to end of Q4 to early 2011 to sometime 2011… in
October a 2.2.1 test ROM from Motorola leaked (the "G.O.T." ROM), and they
still haven't managed to put out a release.

I don't trust Motorola on anything anymore. Their hardware was pretty good,
but their service and communication with their customers is abysmal.

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radicaldreamer
So what is the competitive advantage that the Motorla Xoom now has?

And what does it have to justify it's $100 price premium over the iPad?

~~~
cryptoz
It has a brand-new UI that is tablet-optimized. I think the principle
advantage of any Android tablet over iPad is Honeycomb; with widgets and real
multitasking, it's much much more usable as a real computer than the iPad is.

I think it also has two cameras, a significantly faster CPU, other features
like that. Really though, the main thing it has going for it is Honeycomb.
Most people will be very impressed with it after playing with a demo model in
a store. It's much more futuristic and cooler than the now-old iOS icon-grid
paradigm.

~~~
tomkarlo
You lost me at "real computer." In my own experience, one of the biggest
reasons that normal customers like the iPad is _because_ it's not like their
desktop computer.

The obsession with emulating a desktop/laptop experience is mainly the domain
of those of us who are already experts in that experience; for average users
who may generally dislike the "real computer", it's not a selling point.

~~~
spoondan
I think he meant that the Xoom is capable of _replacing_ a desktop or laptop;
not that it _emulates_ them.

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code_duck
I go out of my way to avoid using Flash on my Android phone.

Steve Jobs and others are right: Flash apps are not meant for touch screens,
or mobile devices in general. I miss it only a little when I'm using iOS.

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moeffju
Well, it seems like Spring 2011 is not actually Spring 2011. Here's Adobe's
blog post on the matter: [http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2011/02/update-
for-fp-1...](http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2011/02/update-for-
fp-10-2-on-tabs.html)

Money quote: _Adobe will offer Flash Player 10.2 pre-installed on some tablets
and as an OTA download on others within a few weeks of Android 3 (Honeycomb)
devices becoming available, the first of which is expected to be the Motorola
Xoom._

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Bossman
Will the browser have full HTML5 support? Can I go to YouTube in it and watch
videos without flash? I admittedly don't know much about the Android 3.0
browser.

~~~
cryptoz
Android's browser has supported much of HTML5 for years now. Nobody can claim
"full" support since HTML5 is a very vague term with a currently changing set
of technologies included. I'm not even sure if it's still called HTML5
actually.

Edit: About Youtube: Yes. You can go there and watch the videos just fine. I
think you're (transparently) redirected to the YouTube app.

~~~
Bossman
Yeah, but I don't want to _have_ to be moved to the YouTube app. I want to
know if I can use the built in browser to watch HTML5 videos. I know I can do
it on YouTube with my PC browser if I enable it on my YT account...

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xentronium
Why don't they adopt click-to-play trick to get the best from both worlds?

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sudont
Most likely because the browser on the device will be positioned as _the real
“full web”_ when it’s upgraded to the 10.2 release. A useful feature that runs
counter to a marketing strategy will always get cut.

This is part of the reason Flash was blacklisted from iOS: features have to
wait on Adobe’s schedule to be enabled, instead of being available out-of-box.

~~~
blocke
Or they could have just done what Android did. Allow browser plugins and make
it Adobe's problem to put the plugin in the market.

Google isn't holding back on major OS updates because Adobe isn't ready.

~~~
cosmicray
From what I've read, and experienced with Flash on the OS X desktop, the issue
was caused by Flash beating up hard on the CPU (and thereby causing a battery
drain). The last thing Apple wants is to list a battery life in the specs, and
then watch some Flash based game decimate it.

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ChrisLTD
Adobe has been in a serious funk since they took over Macromedia. We shouldn't
be surprised competition breeds better products.

~~~
maxharris
Adobe should never have absorbed Macromedia. Adobe's mainstays (Photoshop,
Illustrator) have taken a terrible turn for the worse (slower, buggier, non-
native UIs), while getting more expensive at the same time.

Adobe's software used to be indespensable to me, but now there's Pixelmator,
which carries the true (old) Adobe legacy. Does anyone know if Pixelmator is
going to make a vector tool? If they do, lots of designers will be completely
Adobe-free!

~~~
ChrisLTD
Yep. They've had no competition forcing them to do better. At least with Flash
they now feel the heat from native H.264 playback and JavaScript/CSS
animations.

~~~
maxharris
I voted you up, but I'm not quite sure that's the whole story.

I think Adobe absorbed a bad corporate culture when they acquired Macromedia,
and that better accounts for why they're making such bad products now. On top
of this, Adobe will never be a successful platform vendor because they suck at
making platforms, and the market has too many platforms already.

Will competition somehow make Adobe good again? It might, but it's by no means
certain. The long-term alternative for them is failure in the marketplace.

Signs of things turning around for Adobe will be when they: > Make HTML5 the
primary target for all Adobe software (make authoring for Flash not the
default). > Dump Air. > Make the new Acrobat a slim wrapper around HTML5,
facilitating a transition away from Acrobat toward standards. > Stop trying to
be cross-platform. Use native UI in all software. Dump the installer on
platforms where installers aren't standard (Mac OS X). > make completely new
creative applications for iOS. An iOS-based desktop computer is probably
coming. If Adobe was smart, it would try to make great native tools for
creative professionals again. > Fire the executives they picked up from
Macromedia and lay off legacy staff.

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smallegan
Like.

