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Adobe plays the porn card against Apple and the iPad
Couple the lack of iPhone support with the keynote presentation of the iPad, where Steve Jobs proudly displays the lack of Flash, and you can see why Adobe has just launched an anti-iPad smear campaign.
Not ones to tread lightly, or even scale up their assault, they've waded right in and played the porn card. As you can see, they've already removed the offensive part of the screenshot, but not before generating a lot of angry comments and even some commentary from Wired.
Adobe's poster ends with the slogan "Millions of websites use Flash. Get used to the blue legos." Maybe, as Jay said yesterday, Apple's customers don't want Flash. It performs poorly, it steals vital CPU cycles, it flattens your battery faster than an American stocking up at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Hopefully this is the kick in the butt Adobe needs to make Flash a little more efficient and less impotence-inducing. Watching --and feeling! -- my 2.2GHz laptop sit at 100% CPU usage while viewing Flash videos is truly a sad sight to behold.
Comments
33
Subscribe to commentsCoby W. JonesJan 30th 2010 12:31PM
sitrucJan 30th 2010 3:28PM
+1
Brilliant
Coby W. JonesJan 30th 2010 12:34PM
Wow, even a writer will turn a justified Adobe rant against Apple, and turn it into a bash against Adobe.
Come on guys we get enough biased writing from every other news organization.....
P.S. we also get enough Apple fanboyism.
Sebastian AnthonyJan 30th 2010 12:50PM
The only Apple device I own is a second-generation iPod, for what it's worth.
Gardiner WestboundJan 30th 2010 12:47PM
Adobe has to get it's act together. Its applications, though excellent, are bloated, slow running, resource hogs. Their anti-piracy measures, though understandable and justifiable, punish paid up users.
Foxit Phantom is an excellent Adobe Acrobat substitute. I am experimenting with GIMP and others to replace PhotoShop. Will be glad to see a Flash replacement.
karanFeb 1st 2010 12:41AM
Try Paint.Net - works really well and is 100x faster than PS
octoberasianJan 30th 2010 12:49PM
Flash does have its share of problems. On a system with 4 GB of RAM, an AMD Phenom II X4 2.53 GHz CPU, and Windows 7 64-bit, if I have a Youtube video open or a Flash-heavy website open in a tab or in multiple tabs in Firefox 3.6.1 (and previous versions as well down to 2.x.x), the system DOES bog down. RAM usage jumps to 400 to 600-plus MB alone, and this is disabling every known add-on I have installed. I have even seen it stall Firefox and even crash it. Performance is shoddy with multiple Youtube tabs open, and video stutters constantly, even with a 6mbit ADSL connection.
Similar issue with Google Chrome 4 (latest stable version), Flash would jump one chrome.exe process to 100 to 200 MB of RAM, whereas a tab in Chrome (another chrome.exe process) with no Flash displayed is sitting below 80 MB of RAM or lower depending on the content displayed.
The issue is not that much of a problem with IE8 so it either tells me that Adobe is in cahoots with Microsoft or something else entirely. However, there are occasions where a single iexplore.exe process would jump to 100 to 150 MB of RAM if Youtube or another Flash website is present in one of the tabs. (Each tab, like Chrome, is a single iexplore.exe process if you didn't know.)
Surprisingly, of all this, Silverlight has given me the least problems so far. It was buggy at version 1 but incredibly stable by version 2 and higher. It is unfortunate that Silverlight does not have the market penetration as Flash does.
So, not being an Apple fanboy, I can understand Apple's reasoning for not supporting Flash especially on a portable device. If it is to be believed that Flash does eat CPU cycles, then one can draw a conclusion that in return an increased in CPU cycles would lead to decreased battery life. And, Apple have stated that the iPad can have 10 hours of battery life. How much less is it if Flash was enabled?
Sebastian AnthonyJan 30th 2010 12:52PM
I don't think it's a surprise that Silverlight is more efficient -- Flash is getting pretty old now. I don't know the code base, but I'd hazard a guess that they're not rebuilding the technology with every release... probably strapping things on instead.
They should stop abusing their almost-100% market penetration and actually get it to run smoothly :)
octoberasianJan 30th 2010 1:30PM
Adobe is probably getting cocky because of their market penetration and started to care less and less nowadays. It's almost like how Intel is with their CPUs-- the best ones will be over 300 to 400$ USD compared to an AMD processor. Microsoft wised up (a bit) after releasing Windows 7 and has improved my view of them (a little... except for that IE flaw that allowed Google to be hacked plus 34 other companies). Heck, at least they admitted it.
I've stopped using Acrobat since I switched to Foxit Reader over three years ago. It's just unfortunate that I still use Acrobat Professional to make PDFs. I haven't found a good equivalent so far.
I've already gotten pissed at them on the Adobe forums for excluding ATI Radeon 3000-series (desktop version) and limiting the number of ATI cards for GPU acceleration in Flash Player 10: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2555000#2555000 I currently use a Radeon 3870 on my desktop PC, and I'm not willing to get a new video card unless I do a full system upgrade which sometime after AMD's 6-core Thuban CPU or Bulldozer is released.
You compare the list and more Nvidia cards are have more GPU acceleration compatibility than ATI itself. So, it's either a.) Adobe is in cahoots with Nvidia or b.) AMD isn't helping them, or c.) Adobe acting and high and mighty.
KorangulationJan 30th 2010 1:35PM
octoberasian: you're surprised that performance goes down and your 6mbit connection stutters when you have multiple youtube *videos* open? Of course it will. Videos require decoding. And downloading.
Sebastien: Adobe re-wrote the ActionScript Virtual Machine in Flash Player 9 when ActionScript 3 came out.
While I agree that Flash Player is slow in OS X, and it needs to be more efficient, let's not kid ourselves by that that's the reason why Flash Player isn't supported in iPhone and iPad. Apple can easily have a toggle button in preferences that enables/disables Flash content, or disables Flash content by default unless you click on the blue lego to load it. No, Apple's not letting Flash into the iPhone OS because they want total control of what you can do on their hardware.
octoberasianJan 30th 2010 2:24PM
You didn't read my post correctly.
If one tab is fully loaded on one Youtube video, the other tab with another video open and still loading, it stutters.
If one tab has a website with Flash on it, the other tab with a Youtube video still loading stutters.
If one tab has a website with Flash on it loaded, the other tab with another website with Flash on it slows Firefox down and increases its RAM usage.
If more than one tab has a website loaded that contains Flash content on each, the entire browser slows down and RAM usage jumps.
One tab with Youtube will load fine. Two tabs or more, Youtube runs much slower. Two tabs or more, Flash content filled websites makes Firefox runs slower.
MarkBJan 30th 2010 12:51PM
One question for me remains on this whole issue - is there a statement or anything out there from Apple that confirms that the iPad WILL NOT support Flash?
Could it be that Job's unsaid "Oh, by the way..." is that Apple's working on a 'magical' plugin that will render Flash better than Adobe's own plugin and it just wasn't ready?
Sebastian AnthonyJan 30th 2010 12:53PM
Hehe, we can hope that's the case...
But I doubt we'll see or hear about it until it's released... if ever.
RvdPJan 30th 2010 1:24PM
I think this sums it up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4&feature=player_embedded
NeoprimalJan 30th 2010 1:25PM
If Adobe used 1% of a cpu cycle, Apple still wouldn't enable Flash in the IPod, IPad or IPhone - why? APPS!
Flash is a competitor, and we all know that Apple locks out competitors as completely as they can. So don't fool yourself into thinking this is about efficiency or politics. This is 100% business.
If these devices supported Flash, then people would get Flash Apps and go to Flash sites vs. buy Apps. Devs would program in flash, vs. pay a royalty to Apple to make Apps for the App store.
So yeah...think again. Flash will never see the light of day on any Apple device unless they work out some way to pay Apple.
EvenioJan 31st 2010 12:18AM
The 4000+ Flash-free, standards-based web apps (including games) listed on Apple's own website at their (slight) expense, and touted by Apple themselves as an open development platform right from the iPhone's introduction, kinda blow a hole in that.
AlJan 30th 2010 1:35PM
you really don't get it Sebastian. They should give users the CHOICE of turning flash on or off, just like you do in a pc, by installing the plugin or not.
Apple shouldn't choose for me.
Sebastian AnthonyJan 30th 2010 1:37PM
From a consumer-perspective that certainly makes most sense.
But as I said, they would also lose control over the apps that get installed on the device, because Flash is so powerful.
I'm pretty sure this is a controlling-the-user-experience thing more than anything else.
r3loadedJan 30th 2010 2:16PM
Flash works perfectly fine on the N900's browser, so don't bring that old chestnut up again. It's just Apple being typically Apple.
ScraynJan 30th 2010 3:54PM
Sebastian, I think you hit the nail on the head perfectly. Apple wants to control the user experience from start to finish. Being a Windows user and being a gamer, I can't switch to Mac because I need flexibility.
But your point on Adobe is also taken, as I can't have too many tabs in Firefox open with Flash, lest I incur the wrath from the whatever high atop the thing and crash in the middle of a heated session of Tetris. Plus, the iPad isn't really a full-fledged computer in the first place, so whether or not it'll have the raw horsepower to actually *run* Flash remains to be seen.