

Adobe confirms it won't support Flash on Android 4.1 - jdhouse4
http://m.engadget.com/2012/06/28/adobe-confirms-it-wont-support-flash-on-android-4-1/

======
JoshTriplett
Hopefully the absence of Flash on _both_ major mobile platforms will help
speed its demise on non-mobile platforms as well.

On the other hand, this news might just precede another announcement from
Google saying "don't worry, Adobe doesn't support it anymore, but we do", just
as they did for Flash on Linux.

~~~
ido
What is your problem with flash, really? I honestly can't think of a better
platform for web games (and it's one of the easiest way to develop 2d games,
regardless of web or not).

The only thing I can think of is people who don't care about games, in that
case flash does seem like an annoyance more than anything (we can do without
flash restaurant sites or punch the monkey banners, but i suspect html5/js
will just take its place there).

But really, it's a great game development platform and mostly runs really well
on windows and these days well enough on linux & mac (assuming the programmer
isn't doing something dumb like a busy waiting loop, which would suck
resources regardless of platform).

haxe+flash runtime is my favorite environment for developing (and playing) 2d
games by a long shot, so I am always a bit puzzled by all the flack it's
getting.

~~~
alister
What's the problem with Flash?

1\. Ceaselessly the biggest security hole on desktop computers.

2\. Proprietary.

3\. The need to install it in the first place and keep updating it. (And, no,
I don't want it to auto-update.)

4\. Can't cut and paste text from it. It's ridiculous to have to _manually_
write down an address or phone number from a Flash-based site.

5\. Search engines don't properly index it.

6\. A Flash developer can hold you hostage by not giving you the "source" (the
FLA master file).

7\. It's allegedly a major source of browser crashes (or so I've read though I
can't prove this).

8\. It's slow. A website is insanely bloated to use Flash when text and
pictures could have communicated the same information.

9\. It imposes DRM even when the content owner didn't intend it. Think of all
the subterfuge and trickery necessary to download a Flash video even when the
website owner wouldn't have minded.

~~~
nkohari
You should leave #6 out of your list. Your argument would be much more
compelling for it. (Compilation/obfuscation is the norm, not the exception.)

~~~
alister
You're quite right. I was thinking of an unsophisticated site owner with
simple requirements (like a restaurant site) who hires a designer. He wouldn't
know to put into the contract that all source code must be delivered. In such
a case, he'd be better off if the designer used straight HTML. At least then
there's a chance that someone else could edit it or maintain it.

~~~
talmand
Although I agree with the problem of the developer not handing over the source
files, the same problem potentially exists if the designer doesn't hand over
the source Photoshop and/or Illustrator files. Granted, that's not as big a
deal as withholding Flash files, but it's there.

------
EnderMB
It appears that no one who has commented so far has used Flash on ICS.

I use Flash on my Galaxy Nexus, and it runs perfectly fine for everything I
want to look at. Sure, it's rubbish for things like games and full-flash
websites (the latter should be long gone by now anyway) but for watching Flash
videos on news websites it's fantastic, and it works just as well as it does
on the desktop.

I want Flash gone as much as the next guy, but video on HTML5 is no more
usable.

~~~
molmalo
Video on mobile browsers should launch a video player like YouTube does when
you follow a link their site. But also there should exist an attribute to
avoid this for some cases.

~~~
EnderMB
YouTube isn't the only Flash video player though. What if you click a Vimeo
link? What about a link on the BBC?

It would be ideal if there were a good native solution for all videos, but I
can imagine this to be quite a hard problem.

~~~
molmalo
I said "a video player" meaning a generic one. like when you click an flv link
or rtsp, that launches the stock video app in my phone (ics)

------
nkurz
What's Adobe's long term strategy here? I'm happy to see it go, but this seems
like it would just be hasten the demise of Flash on the internet. I haven't
been following this, but assumed that Adobe benefited from the ubiquity Flash
on the desktop. Have they just chosen to get out of this market altogether and
concentrate their efforts elsewhere? Or is there a master plan I'm not seeing?

~~~
molmalo
Adobe's core business is not developing platforms, but developing the editors
and tools for designers. Graphic design, web design, vector, raster, doesn't
matter. They make money selling their software, not deploying flash all over
the web.

Here you have a link to a comment I made a few months ago, about Adobe's
shifting strategy regarding Flash:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3503774>

I'll copy here some parts, so I can edit a little, mostly to adjust for
current trends:

\------------

Their business is to make and sell amazing Editors. CS is their main product.
They bought Macromedia, just to own much of the market of Designer-oriented
applications. And Macromedia filled a Gap.

But from now on, they are investing heavily in building tools for HTML5. -You
can see them building Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tools. [1] (this link is
almost a year old, so I'd expect them to have something much more advanced by
now). \- They are building HTML5 Editors [2] \- They stopped developing Flash
Player mobile. [3] In the same post where they state that they will stop
developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, they state: Adobe to More
Aggressively Contribute to HTML5. Ok, ok, they also state that they will keep
working in Flash for desktop. But it's like when any software company says:
"We'll drop X, Y, Z so we can focus on A". That's something said to please
their shareholders, so it doesn't sounds like "As our products are no longer
needed, we'll just kill them".

If you are a guest inside the browser, and the browser developer just throws
you away (iOS, Windows 8 in Metro, only running in whitelist-pages), you have
to move somewhere else.

Adobe just wants to keep selling their Creative Suite. So, the best thing for
them to do, is to focus on HTML5, because they now know that Flash is doomed
sooner or later. And they are doing it. I expect to see in the near future
something like Adobe Flash Professional but designed for HTML5.

[1] <http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/> [2]
<http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/> [3]
[http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-
focus.htm...](http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.html)

One more thing: Imagine for a moment that you are Adobe. You have an amazing
suite of products, and a few of them are based on Flash. You realize that the
browser developers have chosen to work and invest in something else. You go
through all 5 stages of grief [4]. You deny it, you get angry, you bargain,
you get depressed, but finally at least, you accept it. You HAVE to adapt and
you have to work with them. But you won't have anything to sell for at least 1
or 2 years. And you still have this wonderful suite on the market. What do you
do? Do you go out and yell: DON'T BUY IT! WAIT UNTIL WE RELEASE OUR FUTURE-
PROOF PRODUCT!!! Of course not!!! You say We are already working on Flash
Player 12 and a new round of exciting features which we expect to again
advance what is possible for delivering high definition entertainment
experiences But at the same time, in the same paragraph you say: _We will
continue to leverage our experience with Flash to accelerate our work with the
W3C and WebKit to bring similar capabilities to HTML5 as quickly as possible,
just as we have done with CSS Shaders. And, we will design new features in
Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve so developers
can confidently invest knowing their skills will continue to be leveraged._

Read it again: _a smooth transition to HTML5._

TRANSITION.

That's their way to say: "Keep buying and using our products, while we develop
our HTML5 editors. Then, you can buy our new products and move to HTML5 too."

They have went through the last phase. They have accepted it. And they are
adapting, good for them :)

[4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model>

------
zmmmmm
It's interesting how hard they are pushing this; there is still quite a lot of
Flash on the web ... at least most smaller sites hosting / streaming video
seem to still rely on it. I actually would have thought they could make a
decent bit of revenue just by offering it to OEMs as a selling point. Perhaps
they see even more revenue by forcing all the recalcitrant sites still using
Flash to buy Adobe's tools as the easiest upgrade path to get onto HTML5.

~~~
mkaltenecker
If things go like they did in the past, 4.1 being widely adopted is years
away. I don’t see this having much if any impact on anything right now.

~~~
zmmmmm
Well, if they are pulling it from the market then it will have an impact much
sooner than that. I suppose device manufacturers might ship it bundled.

------
listic
I'm afraid the reason Flash works poorly on platforms other than Win32 and
Adobe is dropping the platform support is that they don't have the people that
understand their code anymore, and there's noone to make it run (properly) on
new platforms.

~~~
rachelbythebay
If you had a choice, would you work on a project like that? Some of these
projects spell doom when they show up on a resume because they're already
associated with badness. Once that happens, good luck getting any good people
to work on it. As you can see, such a situation can sustain itself.

I call it "The Bozo Loop", incidentally.

------
zanny
There is the downside to this, in that by forcing rapid adoption of web video
via <video> they are going to force h.264 on everyone and if libavc ever gets
attacked by mpeg open source video software is doomed. Why can't we just use
ogv :(

~~~
asdfaoeu
You're practically limited to h.264 anyway on mobile devices none of the
hardware has support for anything else.

~~~
fpgeek
Every Gingerbread and up phone has support for WebM.

~~~
icebraining
_Hardware_ support?

~~~
DannyBee
Newer SOC's have hardware support for it.

OMAP4470 supports it in hardware (so galaxy nexus like phones).

OMAP54XX supports it in hardware.

Tegra 3 supports it in hardware.

So just in time for this development ;)

------
prioris
If Adobe allows Google to adopt flash and continue support to develop and
support it then I don't see any problem. Android is Google's baby so they need
to adopt the flash development. Adobe is fecked up if they don't allow it.

As far Flash being terrible. I have never had any negative experiences. This
blanket negative view of flash is just hype. It is used all over the place. In
the hands of a bad programmer, any application can be terrible.

Performance tests between flash and html5 don't show much advantage to using
html5.

The PRIMARY and ONLY reason for moving to html5 is that it is not proprietary.

As far as security hole, it was put there intentionally. Windows OS is one big
security hole so it is like pointing to a tree in a forest. Other reasons are
frivolous.

So we should move towards html5 but keep flash player working on all platforms
until full migration of internet occurs to html5. There is simply too much
flash content so it will take a long time to migrate.

------
cletus
Seriously, Flash just needs to die and the sooner the better. It's horrible.
I'm not even talking programming here (I know nothing about Flash
programming). It's a horrible _user experience_.

One of the things I'm thankful to Apple for is in them taking a stand against
this horrible experience and hastening its demise. Lack of Flash on iOS is a
_feature_.

Flash isn't horrible _per se_. It's horrible because Adobe is completely
incompetent in making it run stably and on platforms other than Windows (and
even there it's a stretch). Were they competent and the Flash experience just
worked, I'd be fine with it.

The suckiness of Flash is what's driving the adoption of HTML5/JS because,
let's face it, HTML5/JS isn't exactly a mature platform yet.

I just wish there was a way I could run a browser with Flash even installed
without being bugged by "You're missing plugins. Would you like to install
them?" Flashblock, Click-to-Flash and the like help but I'd rather not have
the software installed at all.

It makes me sad that Chrome bundles Flash and can't have it conveniently
extracted either.

To be fair, Apple didn't kill Flash (much as I'd like to give them credit for
it). Adobe did.

~~~
talmand
But what exactly are you basing the accusation of a horrible user experience
on? Is it a matter of a Flash app that's badly designed? Because that's not
Adobe's fault. If one were to duplicate the app's horrible user experience
over to iOS does that mean the user experience for iOS apps can be considered
as horrible? If I write some bad javascript that causes the browser to
consistently crash does that mean that javascript or even the browser sucks?

Lack of Flash on iOS is a feature for you. Let's not assume what's good for
you must be good for everyone else. I for one have never had much of a problem
with Flash on the hardware that I use, but in some circles a negative opinion
always outweighs a positive one.

The complaints about the problems you describe just running the Flash player
on several different platforms are rather well deserved. It does seem that
Adobe has decided at some point to drop the ball on the whole thing. But the
player does support backwards compatibility all the way back to the beginning.
I've always thought that possibly the majority of their problems relate to
that. They should try just ripping out support for anything that uses versions
less than actionscript 3 for a leaner plugin.

But, this statement does seem more about the Flash player itself in the
browser. It doesn't necessarily mean that Flash, as in the platform, will die.
It'll probably live on as its own platform that requires something like Adobe
Air to run on some hardware.

Also, almost everything you hate about Flash's "user experience" will live on
in the canvas tag. Unless I misunderstand what you mean by user experience.

~~~
27182818284
>But what exactly are you basing the accusation of a horrible user experience
on?

Can't speak for them, but yeah, I mean, in the end it is all subjective right?
You can try to measure it, but sometimes Shit Just Doesn't Feel Right™. That's
how I've ALWAYS felt about Flash. Before Steve Jobs said it, before Google was
a company and I was little, and after I anxiously installed it on Android only
to once again be sad by how awful it is.

Also developers at WWDC or Google I/O wouldn't cheer if either company said
"We're going all in on Flash." they would look at their neighbor and say,
"Wait...what? Why?"

~~~
talmand
But then I could make you a Flash app that does nothing but show a blank
640x480 stage with a simple button and then you would say "that just doesn't
feel right"? But if I did the same thing in canvas you would react with
"that's better"? That doesn't address my question about what is meant by "user
experience". It is a tool, nothing else. Unless someone can show me a common
trait across almost all Flash apps that is some sort of fail that can be
directly tied to Flash then I attribute complaints of user experience to the
developers of the app, not the tool.

Now, if you were to say that your experience with Flash in general on mobile
devices is that it tends to crash and is slow; then that makes sense. That
would be a user experience problem directed at Flash. It just seems to me most
complaints of user experience with Flash is based on a misguided hatred of
Flash itself.

The reason everyone would react that way with your hypothetical is because
that would be stupid, that's not what Flash is for.

------
bbayer
Flash is a platform and it is very unique virtual machine. It has its own
features. Since it is a virtual machine it has great potential. I think most
problematic part that Adobe has to face is fragmentation. It is very complex
task to maintain a complex VM ( which consists of very high level graphics
capabilities) to run smoothly on every single hardware. Flash has provided
lots of great stuff which is not provided by any platform before. Even now
there is no any other choice for specific tasks like P2P video.

------
mbq
I can't understand why they haven't just made FP open source... Flash on the
web is maybe dead, but it is still usable for kiosks, games and AIR-related
stuff (AIR used to be a best idea for platform-independent wrapper of active
PDFs, thus killing it is a strike into this technology). So it is possible to
sustain the Flash market for years with minimal costs...

------
zobzu
its not really that adobe won't support it. its that chrome is default and
never supported it.

I bet we can install ICS's flash and whatever req. libs and it works with
other browsers.

~~~
gcp
If you can install it from the market it will likely just work with Firefox.

~~~
fpgeek
They're blocking installs after August 15th, so if you want it, you'd better
hurry. Though it isn't clear what happens if you've installed Flash
previously, but not on the particular device you want it on.

~~~
stephengillie
_In an update on its official blog, Adobe said that there will be no certified
implementations of Flash Player for Android 4.1 and beginning August 15, it
will start limiting access to updates to only users that have Flash Player
installed._

From [http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/06/29/abobe-pulls-
support-...](http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/06/29/abobe-pulls-support-for-
flash-player-on-android-4-1-limits-new-google-play-installations-from-
august-15/)

(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4175853>)

------
thethimble
This is a good move. I'm glad Adobe is coming to terms with the end of Flash.
Moving resources away from Flash to other areas where Adobe is successful is a
win for everyone.

------
kamechan
here's to hoping that google will step in here as they did with linux and make
it run anyway...

~~~
leke
I think that's exactly why Adobe did it. Save money by making google do the
work for us.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
_The company had already said that HTML5 was the way forward on phones and
tablets -- now we know just how quickly it's backing up that claim._

Why don't we just move onto HTML5 now? I use iOS devices and completely
removed Flash from my Mac months ago. There is a Safari plugin to force the
use of the H264 stream from youtube.

Haven't missed Flash at all.

~~~
k-mcgrady
I would like to do this but I've found that YouTube's HTML5 player is
terrible. Buffering is always erratic and just loading the page causes my
browser to freeze for 5-10 seconds (it usually starts working again once the
video is loaded into the player). As much as I want to see Flash go away it's
still the best choice for web video on a desktop machine (at least on
YouTube).

~~~
Synaesthesia
Yes, the Youtube HTML5 player is bad, but the Safari plug in mentioned (I
think it only works on Mac) is great. It's called youtube5 btw

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
Yes, unfortunately it is for OS X Safari only
<http://www.verticalforest.com/youtube5-extension/>.

But it does show you can get on just fine without Flash. There is no
equivalent Chrome extension. I don't know why. A completely Flash free
experience is the reason I use Safari.

------
LukaD
And I confirm that I will turn off flash in all my browsers now.

------
kleiba
Gnash to the rescue!

~~~
zanny
Why not just bake libflv support into Firefox / Chrome <video> tags?

~~~
gcp
I'm guessing, but because that only covers video?

