Adobe ‘proves’ Flash runs on iPhone, misses point
TechRadar reports Adobe’s firing more shots at Apple regarding Flash on iPhone. The arguments, made via an irritating, patronising ‘skit’ suggest 1) Apple is really stupid because Flash doesn’t run on iPhone, and; 2) Adobe is really great, because it can get Flash to run on iPhone.
However, important points are missed:
- The Mac version of the Flash plug-in sucks balls. It’s the main source of Safari crashes on the Mac desktop, and the sandboxed plug-in still crashes regularly on Snow Leopard. The likelihood is, on the basis of the Mac version, the Flash plug-in could also suck balls on iPhone. Worse, with iPhone being relatively underpowered compared to desktop Macs, a Flash plug-in would wreck Safari’s stability and speed.
- Adobe’s mostly crowing about standalone Flash apps. There’s a whole world of difference between Flash apps on iPhone and Flash working within a browser that has its own overheads. (Note also that Flash apps don’t have access to OS X for iPhone UI components, and so many of them are a mess in terms of interface.)
I very much hope reporters don’t start moaning in unison that since Flash apps run on iPhone, so too should the plug-in—but I’ll bet they will. In the meantime, perhaps if Adobe rewrote its Mac Flash plug-in so it was even remotely comparable to the Windows one, Mac users and Apple itself wouldn’t be quite so hostile towards the technology.
You need to do more research before you go on a rant like this.
The iPhone runs on an ARM CPU. The 3GS, in fact, runs on the same CPU found on the Palm Pre. These CPUs do not have interchangeable code with x86, or even PPC CPUs found on Macs.
The reason this is important is that before this Flash Lite movement, there was NO ARM CPU Flash code. All the code running on the various mobile platforms, including the iPhone, would have needed a rewrite. Also, keep in mind that there’s another reason for a rewrite. Without it, performance would be abysmal. Flash Lite, while compatible with 90% of flash SWFs, is not 100% compatible. Some features were reduced or cut in order to keep the mobile platform fast, and easy on battery. It also features entirely new GPU acceleration to help the mobile devices perform better.
Also, you’ll probably find that Flash is not really the culprit with your crashes. I do not see anywhere near the level of crashing you do, and I believe the plugins actually run the same code on PC and Mac now (as they are both x86 CPUs), with small adjustments for the differing file structure, plugin interface on Safari, and GUI.
My point, which perhaps wasn’t clear enough, is that for the Mac platform, Flash is an utter dog, and Adobe is either unwilling or unable to deal with this shortcoming. Therefore, that’s at least one very big reason why Apple is so reluctant to enable a Flash plug-in on its device—it doesn’t want to take the risk that Flash would cause problems with its mobile browser. Also, the Flash plug-in is well known for causing huge problems for the Mac version of Safari, hence why it was sandboxed in Snow Leopard. Since installing Snow Leopard, Flash has continued to regularly crash, but at least the browser isn’t taken down with it. In performance terms, regardless of shared code the Mac Flash plug-in remains considerably slower than its Windows equivalent.
Perhaps its your Safari causing problems, as I run Firefox on OS X, and I have no such issues, neither with performance nor crashing.
Sandboxing is nothing new, and in fact, Chrome does it for ALL plugins, not just flash. If I’m not mistaken, the same applies to Safari now. That was not implemented soley because Flash is far too unstable, but because it’s more sensible overall. It’s the same reason why OSes in general try to keep one process from taking down the entire system. It wasn’t put in because a certain program was unstable. It was put in because it doesn’t make sense to let one part of the system take the rest down, in general.
Also, to render the rest of this completely irrelevant, my point was that there is absolutely no reason to bring in general Mac complaints about flash over to any edition that would arrive for the iPhone. The iPhone would be running an entirely rewritten set of code that would be completely unrelated to the Mac version, and would actually be the same code running on many devices, including Nokia phones and Palm phones.
You’re simply making a connection where there is none. You need to look at the iPhone in terms of its hardware, not its software. Stripping out the OS layer, that iPhone has little difference between other phones of similar hardware. And that OS layer is not going to affect the plugin, by design.
Safari for Mac/Flash plug-in problems are not ubiquitous, merely commonplace. Many readers of various publications I write for have had similar problems with their systems.
And while I fully understand your point that any Adobe plug-in for iPhone wouldn’t be related to the same for Mac OS X, Adobe’s attitude might well be. Why should Apple have any confidence in Adobe to not create something that’ll merely ‘do the job’ (and therefore potentially hobble its mobile browser, although obviously not through malice)? Perhaps Adobe would pull out all the stops, just to get on to OS X for iPhone, but it’s just as likely it wouldn’t. Also, from reviews and experience, it seems on other mobile platforms that Flash has the capacity to cause major speed problems as a browser plug-in.
If for no other reason than because if Flash was available on the iPhone it would be the single-largest installation of Flash Lite 10.1 in existence.
This isn’t the first time that Apple has shown Adobe the door, by the way. Adobe has been hit hard by many changes on the OS X platform with its various CS products. Adobe has been nothing but calm and forgiving over this.
Apple is being unreasonable. Even if Apple is truly afraid of such a problem on its iPhone, it needs only to glance at the list of companies who are behind Adobe on this matter. In fact, it would be easier to simply list the companies who are not: Apple.
Nokia? Supporting. RIM? Supporting. Google? Supporting. Palm? Supporting. The list goes on. Google and Palm have much reason to be afraid, as well. Flash support on Linux has been little more than a joke in the past. OS X, even if you consider your so called commonplace flash issues, is nothing compared to the Linux side. Google and Palm’s new phones all run Linux. Yet they’re both on board.
Besides, what’s stopping them from sandboxing it on the iPhone as well? It’s not like other apps on the iPhone are perfectly stable either.