Updates to this story
The petty war of words between Adobe and Apple is going strong, with Adobe responding angrily to Apple's attempts to destroy its business by discrediting Flash.
Apple continued its campaign against Flash last week with a report revealing that the MacBook Air lost several hours of battery life when using Flash, which ultimately was never included on the laptop. Adobe claims that Apple is deceiving people, however.
“It's a false argument to make, of the power usage,” said Kevin Lynch, CTO of Adobe, in an interview with Fast Company. “When you're displaying content, any technology will use more power to display, versus not displaying content. If you used HTML5, for example, to display advertisements, that would use as much or more processing power than what Flash uses.”
He said that a number of studies have confirmed that Flash has higher battery life than the Apple report on the MacBook Air. He also said that HTML5, which Apple is touting as Flash's replacement, has less reliable playback. It's funny to think that what began as a bitter battle over having Flash on Apple products has degenerated to both sides squabbling over battery life.
“I just think there's this negative campaigning going on, and, for whatever reason, Apple is really choosing to incite it, and condone it,” said Lynch. “I think that's unfortunate. We don't think it's good for the web to have aspects closed off - a blockade of certain types of expression. There's a decade of content out there that you just can't view on Apple's device, and I think that's not only hurtful to Adobe, but hurtful to everyone that created that content.”
Adobe has gained a lot of allies in the process, however, as many of Apple's big rivals, such as Google, have lent the software firm their support. Frequently people will see Flash receive a prominent place in an advertisement for a new product, showcasing what users can get in comparison to an Apple product.
“No, that's good news for Adobe,” Lynch said in response to being asked if Adobe feels threatened by HTML5. “We support HTML. We're making tools for HTML5. It's a great opportunity for us. Flash and HTML have co-existed, and they're going to continue to to co-exist.”
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Maybe I'm missing the big picture here, but it was Ars Technica that ran the test. I'm not even sure that there was an official comment by Apple with regard to removing Adobe Flash from the standard OSX install. Might be that Abode chastising Apple a while back for not offering the latest Flash update came back to haunt them.
"The petty war of words between Adobe and Apple is going strong, with Adobe responding angrily to Apple's attempts to destroy its business by discrediting Flash."
That's one way to describe it. Another might be: "Adobe: still bedwetters; Flash in Hospice".
Whats with the conspiracy tone..."Apple is out to destroy Adobe's business..."?
Makes for good intrigue but inherently flawed opinion piece...or was this a news story?
To suggest that these tests, which come on the back of a large drive by Apple over the past six months to try to rid the world of Flash, are completely impartial is, in my opinion, naive, particularly from some websites that openly tout themselves as Apple supporters.
While it is true that Apple did not author the reports in question, it is responsible for the negative approach many Apple supporters are taking with Flash and Adobe as a whole, which has led to this kind of test in the first place.
It boggles the mind why Flash and HTML5 cannot co-exist, or why the battle for supremacy between them cannot be won on the grounds of which is actually better in practice, rather than which has the most support from the big boys in the technology world.
Right... So now it's APPLE's fault that Adobe's Flash is a battery-sucking hog?
Notice Adobe did not refute the results, but blamed Apple to trying to cast them in a bad light.
So are you saying that Apple is WRONG? That Flash's poor performance is NOT true at all? That the fact that Ars discovered this 'by accident' is all part of a conspiracy by Apple?
so are you
Your second paragraph opens with "Apple continued its campaign against Flash last week with a report [...]". How can any reasonable reader not interpret this as stating Apple issued the report? You must admit this is a factually incorrect statement.
You took an opinion from Adobe (that Apple pressed the button on this story), and reported it as fact. That you evidently agree with this opinion does not make your offence any lighter. Either you wrote this knowingly, betraying your bias, or you wrote it ignorantly, without a minimum of fact-checking. Which will it be?
Every time the public & pundits explore Jobs' claims it turns out he was exactly right.
Why bad mouth Jobs - He was spot on in assessing Flash.
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Adobe refuses to improve Flash, rather they choose to trash the public, pundits and Apple with petty misleading and inaccurate whining.
For those who question Apple's decision, please start a meaningful dialog by refuting Job's "Thoughts on Flash". Short of that, there is nothing to discuss. Kevin Lynch is simply towing the company line and trying to hedge his bets by praising HTML. However, his comments that suggest Flash has co-existed with HTML are a bit disingenuous. Yes, they have co-existed, but HTML5 specifically challenges the need for Flash altogether. No, there is not a 100% overlap yet, but it's close enough to challenge the need for Flash's existence at all. There is no need for proprietary standards on the web. None. Open stands such as HTML5 (and CSS + Javascript, etc.) make the technology open to everyone (Windows, Mac Linux, etc.) and puts the burden of optimization on the browser maker rather than being hostage to Adobe's whims.
Flash's days are numbered. That's not necessarily a good thing. I can easily avoid the annoying ads by removing the Flash plug-in now. When the move to HTML5 becomes more prevalent, it will be harder to block that crap. Apple may have started the anti-Flash movement, but it will be Microsoft that finishes it. Once IE9 is released and becomes popular, there will be a big push to dump Flash.
Even Microsoft is moving away from their plans to promote Silverlight as a web alternative. They've acknowledged that HTML5 is the future and are relegating Silverlight to Windows Phone 7 development, etc. If anything, that message speaks as loud as anything Apple has said or done to date with regard to marking the end for Flash.
While it is true that Apple did not author the reports in question, it is responsible for the negative approach many Apple supporters are taking with Flash and Adobe as a whole, which has led to this kind of test in the first place."
For the record, Apple announced the first iPhone January 9, 2007.
Here's what Steve Job's had to say about Flash on the iPhone, March 5, 2008:
http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/3/steve-jobs-flash-not-good-enough-for-iphone-is-microsofts-silverlight
Jobs said yesterday that Adobe (ADBE) hasn't created a version of Flash that's suitable for the iPhone, Dow Jones reports. Flash Lite, Adobe's phone-focused software, isn't good enough for the iPhone, Jobs said, and the version of Flash that runs on Mac computers is too slow on the iPhone. "There's this missing product in the middle," Jobs said.
Dan Frommer
Here's a review of Flash Mobile 10.1 from August 18, 2010:
http://blog.laptopmag.com/mobile-flash-fail-weak-android-player-proves-jobs-right#axzz14omUvyyM
"I’m the last person on earth who wanted to believe Steve Jobs when he told Walt Mossberg at D8 that “Flash has had its day.” I took it as nothing more than showmanship when Jobs shared his thoughts on Flash and wrote that “Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices.” After spending time playing with Flash Player 10.1 on the new Droid 2, the first Android 2.2 phone to come with the player pre-installed, I’m sad to admit that Steve Jobs was right. Adobe’s offering seems like it’s too little, too late.
At LAPTOP, we’re still testing mobile Flash on a variety of handsets, but the early returns are a mixed bag, with some sites performing really well and other “unoptimized” videos and games causing restless thumb syndrome. When Flash 10.1 for Android is good, it’s great, but when it’s bad, it can make even the harshest Apple critic want to e-mail Steve Jobs an apology video playing in HTML 5."
Avril Pittch
Adobe has had almost 4 years to prepare Flash Mobile, and even Flash 10.1 isn't ready for primetime nor widely distributed. Apple jumped ship for an open HTML5 instead of an Adobe controlled Flash precisely because Apple has too move to an open internet to move forward.
Hardly the nefarious purpose that you have attached to Apple.
Adobe should be ashamed of themselves for wasting millions of dollars of electricity all over the world. Shame....shame on you.
"We did find (quite by accident) that Apple may have more reasons behind not installing Flash by default other than the stated reason of ensuring that users always have the most up-to-date version. Having Flash installed can cut battery runtime considerably—as much as 33 percent in our testing. With a handful of websites loaded in Safari, Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary, and the best time I recorded with Flash installed was just 4 hours. After deleting Flash, however, the MacBook Air ran for 6:02—with the exact same set of websites reloaded in Safari, and with static ads replacing the CPU-sucking Flash versions."
Don't they see that they are only getting a bad reputation with all this hate ? Flash rules the net, and with an iDevice you only get a crippled internet. I feel sorry for the poor iCan't users.
Kevin Lynch himself states the blatantly obvious by saying: "...for example, to display advertisements, that would use as much or more processing power than what Flash uses.”
I don't want the battery of my Laptop drained down by technology that forces me to watch distracting advertisements. And the main culprit here is Flash.
So Apple is absolutely spot-on to
a) remove the technology that spreads spam by cutting valuable battery life of a laptop.
b) allow every Safari 5 user to filter out this and other unwanted noise (see here for more details: http://www.apple.com/safari/whats-new.html)
In my opinion it's high time for Adobe to do a reality check instead of feeling victimized. The wake-up call for them can't get any louder...
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Let's see, does Flash suck power? Yup. Is it buggy at times? Sure. Is it a resource hog? In most cases. Does that have anything to do with apple's fatwa against it? Absolutely not!
It's all about Apple's walled gardens, ie: we don't want you to see content on the net without us filtering and charging for it first.
Frankly if I were in Adobe's position I would drag my feet on _other_ stuff like Photoshop, Illustrator or PageMaker for mac, perhaps delaying new features for macOS 6 months or a year, or stop developing for macOS altogether.
That would be fun to watch.