Rubénerd!

John Gruber on the lack of Flash in Chrome for Android:

Remember when Android’s (and the BlackBerry Playbook’s, and WebOS’s) support for Flash was supposed to be a competitive advantage against iOS?

I was called out by multiple people when I defended Apple's move to not include Flash, and made the case that mobile Flash made no sense. I'm sure it was the same for John; after all, we're just fanboys!

Still, while it's tempting to engage in a little schadenfreude, the pertitent detail is Adobe ceased support for the mobile version of Flash, it wasn't Google's decision. They don't deserve ire, or praise, as a result.

It's just hearsay in the press for now, so let's not celebrate prematurely!

Ah why not? *throws confetti, then vacuums it up*

From a report in Wired:

In an abrupt about-face in its mobile software strategy, Adobe will soon cease developing its Flash Player plug-in for mobile browsers, according to an e-mail sent to Adobe partners on Tuesday evening.

I'll be waiting for official confirmation from Adobe on this before getting too excited. If a journalist receiving the email misinterpreted it or jumped the gun in a desperate attempt for a scoop, it wouldn't be the first time.

Still, if its true Adobe really is ceasing development of Flash plugins for mobile devices, it's absolutely fantastic news and hopefully signals the end of this whole sordid debate that has been raging for years.

"Sordid" sounds like a "soggy sword", which makes no sense. Unless they were made of cardboard, which makes even less sense. Why would you have a cardboard sword?

We're being open by facilitating closed plugins!

Apple of course famously didn't include Flash in its iDevices, and copped more heat for it even than folks like me who defended their decision on our blogs. Never mind that Adobe didn't have a working prototype for mobile Flash for years after the iPhone's release, or that half the user interactions weren't possible on capacitive touch screens, or that when it was finally released it worked poorly. As far as the tech press was concerned, this was just Apple being all control-freaky.

Control freaky. Super freak. Super freak. She's super freaky!

Still, that didn't stop the competition advertising their support for it in an attempt to differentiate their iClones, even when they predictably failed to deliver (surprise, surprise!). Google even went as far as to advertise their platform as being more free by including Flash, presumably employing the same reality distortion field that allowed them to claim Android was open source. Hey, they're not Apple, so it's okay!

If this story is true and Adobe are ending mobile Flash plugins, I have new found respect for them. I can haz Flash removed on the desktop too now? :D

Madoka Flashica

As an addendum, I started putting Kyubey in all my posts about Flash; not entirely sure why, he just seemed to fit XD. Anyway, with the end of mobile Flash, we can presume it will cease to be included in Android soon, which means I may need to revert my Kyubey/Android icon too. Darn, more work to do!

So I wanted to download some trial software from Adobe.com. No wait, scratch that, I was required to download some trial software from Adobe.com. This is My Tale.

Adobe hates Firefox extensions

Firstly, I'm fully aware that I'm a paranoid internet user. I run NoScript for dynamic content, XSS protection and a slew of other privacy and security features, PermitCookies for cookies and RequestPolicy for XSRF protection. These tools all operate on a whitelist principle; that is block everything by default unless I explicitly make an exception.

Most sites break with these extensions blocking everything, but temporary exceptions allow sites that were written poorly (in my opinion!) to work. That is, except Adobe.com. No matter what I did with these extensions, Adobe.com refused my login credentials, and when I attempted to create a new account just in case my old password didn't work, the site refused to finish the signup form.

For a company with billions in the bank and with the specialities they have, this is inexcusable. I'm sorry, but I don't buy into the idea that it's my fault for my privacy and security extensions if almost every other site is able to work without problems!

Adobe hates security

So eventually I gave up attempting to use Firefox to access this site, so I fired up Camino. Before I got extremely paranoid Camino was my favourite Mac browser, and I still use it for sites that refuse to play nicely with my bolted down Firefox installs.

After ascertaining that the site wouldn't log me in because I'd forgotten my password (which they didn't inform me of in Firefox), I went through the process of resetting my password. Adobe.com assured me they'd be sending me an email to my elected email account with a link to reset my password.

That was over two hours ago, and nothing arrived. Nothing in my spam folders or filters, nothing. Eventually I gave up and opted to create a new account with a disposable email address, which fortunately worked.

I got a kick out of the fact the sign up screen truncated the Australian Capital Territory rather than just abbreviating it, and that they informed me my password was not between 6-12 characters. That's right, Adobe complained that my password was too secure. @ShaunLorrain on Twitter knows what I'm talking about.

@Rubenerd I know right, @Adobe always tells me my password is too long or complex.

Seriously though, who designed this facacta site? What a bunch of jabronis.

Adobe hates simplicity

Of course downloading trialware from Adobe can't be easy either. Adobe, like IBM/Lotus and Microsoft, can't just give us a direct download to the software we're requesting, they have to get us to download a stub application that is then used to download the application. Reminds me of this dialog box on Windows that I blogged about, and my adventures with downloading Windows 7.

Unfortunately its even worse than the obnoxious Java applet you need to run from IBM to download Lotus Symphony. Like the Microsoft download tool, Adobe actually makes you download an application to your desktop in the form of the Akamai Download Manager that then downloads the file you requested.

I like to keep my systems extremely neat, clean and tidy, and I simply don't install software unless I have to. Considering I spent most of my living days in front of computers, my /Applications folder on my Macs and my package managers on FreeBSD and Linux are kept reasonably trim. The fact I have to download and install software to download and install software... is offensive. It means I have to uninstall the junkware they got me to install... to install something. Given Adobe's appalling software security track record and the fact they're software is known to be the most insecure in the industry now, installing extra software from then puts me on edge.

So, did it work?

As of now this download is moving along at about 430KB/s, which means it should be done in about an hour. Granted at least their downloads are faster than getting drivers from HP, if I were downloading 1.72GiB of stuff from them I'd be waiting for weeks for it to finish. Not an exaggeration!

In the meantime, if you'll excuse me, I'll be using Inkscape!

Remember all that obsessive hubub and media speculation regarding Microsoft's potential awkward marriage to Adobe? It seems their CEO has (or rather had) other ideas. Warning, two digressions in this post.

"Adobe's growth prospects are so great that our focus is on seizing these opportunities as an independent company," Adobe Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen was quoted as saying by daily Financial Times Deutschland on Monday.

So what did the two heavyweights have to meet up about? If this Reuters report is to be believed... they were discussing software compatibility as so many people from tech companies regularly do.

Ship, meet people jumping

There was a bit of a pun there. People who eat lots of meat are probably very heavy. But I digress. Did the Adobe CEO just admit that the media worked itself up into a gigantic frenzy for nothing? How could anyone EVER assume the tech media would be capable of such a thing?! It boggles the mind! Of course this could also just be an elaborate smokescreen, which would make more sense owing to the fact Adobe Premiere may be able to be used to generate such effects. I'm more inclined to believe the former for now.

While the rest of the tech community was foaming at the mouth at the idea of Midobe or Adobesoft or some other silly combination of words (like Ruben and Nerd, how patently ridiculous is that?), I never thought it made much sense. They have largely different portfolios of software, but enough overlap to cause problems. Microsoft has far too much pride to discontinue software like Silverlight despite the fact nobody in the real world uses or cares about it, and it would make sense for them to do so in place of Flash.

As an aside, this screenshot of Patented FreeBSD Flash Fail was taken around Christmas 2007 for this post about Adobe Air. I've never really watched any Type-Moon anime but I really like their art style. This was also before KDE 4 came out and broke my heart. KDE 3 was epic. But I digress, again.

Everybody is entitled to my opinion

At least all this Microsoft and Adobe whatnot is just my opinion, but then again I don't really use either of their companies products other than Air (for TweetDeck) and Visio. I also didn't think it made sense to discontinue PageMaker either, or to have Adobe buy Macromedia. Heck I'm just skeptical about mergers full stop, the only super successful one I can think of off the top of my head was Apple buying NeXT, and that only worked because the nimbler and infinitely more talented NeXT team took the reigns.

HP, Microsoft, Adobe... I'd bet a gigantic sushi train dinner they'd never let a smaller company dictate terms to them, to say nothing of being essentially run by the companies they buy. Can you imagine Steve Ballmer giving up the top job for Shantanu Narayen? Then again given Microsoft's decade long stagnant stock price, maybe its time for a change anyway.

Aside from everything else, Microsoft Photoshop is simply a terrifying thought.

From the very beginning of the first iPhone I defended Apple's position against adding Flash support, and the same went for the iPad. Now it seems their position has finally started to pay off, and you won't even need to be an Apple customer to benefit.

First, the two arguments Flash proponents almost universally take when debating this issue are:

1. There's lots of useful, important Flash material out there
2. Why not include Flash by default, but allow people to turn it off?

Except in a few extreme cases where the developers don't provide an open alternative (and they're disappearing rapidly), the first point is patently false, and the second one ignores the fact that much of Flash wouldn't work on a portable device (how do you hover a cursor?) and would just encourage developers to merely put a warning on their pages telling iPhone users to switch on Flash support. Either way, no progress gets made.

Now it seems pages have started popping up across the net with Flash-free, HTML5 support for Apple's iPad. Love or hate the device (and there's certainly lots of material discussing both sides), both it and the iPhone are making a noticeable difference in the adoption of open web standards over closed, proprietary web APIs such as Flash, and Silverlight if that even mattered in the first place.

The iPhone is better for standards than Android?

What I find ironic is that it took a traditionally closed company such as Apple to get the web moving away from the slow, buggy, closed Flash API with limited platform support instead of the so called open Android platform which either comes with or supports Flash. If we were all using Android devices, we'd probably still be using more Flash.

I am a proponent of free and open source software in general, but what I'm a zealot for is open standards. As far as I'm concerned, a proprietary product that exports, saves, opens and manipulates data in open formats is superior to an open source platform that either pays lip service to closed APIs or approves of them.

That's not to say Android hasn't also done amazing things, one of which was to usurp Microsoft's terrible WiMo and make free(er) software the norm on mobile phones which is unprecedented. Have you ever used Pocket Office on WiMo, ugh!

Related posts

• 2010.01.30: iPad without Flash is Google without IE6
• 2010.01.30 Adobe attacks… with figures!

With all this furore about the iPad not having Flash, I thought I'd share this screenshot. Yes Adobe, I would have begrudgingly installed your Flash drug in the past because I felt as though I "needed" it, but having been forced to give it up when I moved most of my machines to FreeBSD (which you don't support) I was forced to get clean and as a consequence I no longer use it even on platforms you do support!

Friends, don't let friends use Flash.

Adobe has responded to the lack of Flash on the new iPad, that Apple tablet device thingy if you haven't heard of it because you were teleported into the future or have been asleep for a few days.

[...] without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web.

Three observations I'll observe (observe observations, no, really?) in rapid-fire succession. One, where did they get those suspect figures from? Two, I was unaware YouTube accounted for less than 25% of online video. Three, 98% of irritating online advertisements and 90% of browser crashes are the fault of Flash which they conveniently failed to mention. Four, I created those numbers out of thin air much like I suspect they did. Those were four observations, but number one and four were related you see.

This morning I defended Apple's decision to not include Flash and compared it to Google deciding to stop supporting Internet Explorer 6. So far I haven't had any angry replies to it yet, perhaps it's the timezone difference.

Of all the criticisms of the iPad that have been thrown around since it's launch barely a few days ago, the loudest seems to be the lack of Flash support. I'm going to get into trouble with a lot of people for saying this, but I consider it a feature, and on par with Google ditching support for Internet Explorer 6 on some of their sites.

Flash never liked Apple anyway

It's no secret Adobe has let Flash languish on the Mac for a long, long time, and they don't even acknowledge the existence of operating systems other than Windows, Mac or 32bit Linux (last time I checked a few years ago even 64bit Linux versions were unavailable). On my non-Mac machines that all run FreeBSD, if I wanted to view Flash content I needed to run the Linux version of Flash using the binary compatibility layer, and even then it was buggy even by Flash's poor standards. As a result I started avoiding sites that use Flash, and now I don't use it. Period.

In high school in 2004 I remember working closely with a guy a few grades below me on a site for the school newspaper and he insisted we use Flash. Even then despite the lack of HTML5 I loathed it because sites rendered in it were confusing, broke basic browser behaviour, didn't index properly and were more often than not ugly as heck. To be fair I levelled the same criticisms against Ajax sites back in 2007, but at least in those cases Ajax doesn't rely on a closed, slow, buggy plugin that is bad enough on the desktop let alone a portable tablet device, and the situation has since improved.

Flash must die!

Then of course there are the security and privacy concerns with Flash that the mainstream media and most pundits are refusing to discuss or even acknowledge. Flash cookies in particular are an extremely nasty invasion of privacy that intentionally and misleadingly sidestep all the preferences users have set with regards to sites remembering information about them. It's like somebody finiding a loophole in your restraining order against them that says they can photograph you from their car provided they use film instead of memory cards and wear a Neelix mask.

I like Apple products because they're simple, elegant and just work, but I'm not afraid to call them out when they do something silly. There are a lot of silly things about this iPad, but one of them is not the lack of Flash support.

If anything I applaud Apple for taking a stand by not putting Flash in their iPhone OS in much the same way I applaud Google for no longer supporting Internet Explorer 6 on many of their sites. Replace many of the arguments people make about the iPad and Flash with Google and Internet Explorer 6 (Apple should make it an option, some sites still need it) and the argument quickly falls apart, or at the very least develops some serious cracks in their credibility.

Sidenotes at the... bottom

One sidenote of note (hah!), how would a dodgy Flash application that requires a mouse to hover over it to reveal aspects of its hidden interface and/or to accept input work on a multi touch interface, without a mouse? It makes no sense.

Sidenote two, more of an observation: the stigma attached to sites that not only use Flash but require it to function has existed for a long time now -- I still remember people in 2000 complaining about sites that required Flash and without an alternative.

And as another sidenote, does anyone else find it ironic that many of the people complaining the iPad doesn't have Flash are also the ones who say the iPad is too "closed"? Double standards much? Double standards sounds like a great name for a pastry shop that sells savoury cakes.

I'm done ranting now, whew! Time to have a cup of green tea.

One of the things that dismays me about most computer software is how incrementally newer versions are heavier and larger than the number of new features and useful functions they contain could explain. "Feature creep" is a term that describes the inevitable phenomena of increased sizes as a result of new features, but we start referring to software as "bloatware" when the increased sizes really can't be justified anymore!

Case in point, this afternoon my dad's corporate computer died and as a result he needed to use his backup home laptop which I hastily installed his work software onto (that's an adventure for another post!). One of the design applications he uses requires a PDF reader so it can show documents internally. I thought "easy!" and proceeded to download the Sumatra PDF Viewer, an extremely lightweight (less than 1.3MiB) and lightening fast free and open source application that I've been recommending over Adobe [Acrobat] Reader and FoxIt Reader for my friends on Windows for a few months now.

ASIDE: I placed the Acrobat brand in square braces because Adobe pulled a Microsoft, only instead of changing a brand by adding superfluous information (such as Windows Internet Explorer) they dropped the Acrobat name from the reader, but kept it in their professional paid products. I wish I understood why people decide to do such things.

No such luck, this particular application requires Adobe Reader, despite Sumatra PDF's ability to read and search PDF documents. I figured the application used some APIs in the Adobe Reader which the Sumatra PDF reader doesn't provide, so I figured I'd bite the bullet and download Adobe Reader after all.

You know you're in for a big download when the vendor provides you with a... download manager!

Now you must understand that given I'm a Mac OS X and FreeBSD desktop guy I've long since been used to having PDF reading functionality in my OS and desktop software so I haven't needed to grab the Adobe Reader in a while. I had forgotten what a pain it really was! The condensed saga in three points:

1. I visited the download page on the Adobe website in Mozilla Firefox on my dad's laptop, but the page refused to load. I turned off NoScript and part of the page loaded, but then got stuck in an infinite loop and refused to finish. No amount of page reloads or waiting solved the problem. Giving up, I launched Internet Explorer (sorry, Windows Internet Explorer) and the page loaded fine. Crappy JavaScript, crappy page or both? Not sure.

2. Once I clicked the download it became apparent this reader I was replacing Sumatra PDF with was almost 30 times the file size! I know it can do more, but 30MiB versus 1.3MiB?

3. It seemed though that Adobe recognised the large size of this file, so they implemented their own download manager which downloads and decompresses the file as it goes on. It's also designed in such a way that if you close the browser window containing the page where you started the download, the download manager closes too. Brilliant!

I've never really liked Adobe or their software, in fact I'd probably use Windows Vista or Windows 7 loaded up with Microsoft Office and Windows Internet Explorer before I touched a breathtakingly overpriced and bloated Adobe application. And believe me I have plenty more stories!

As for my dad's laptop, he now has a functional replacement system which is slower than his work laptop was when it worked, but let's just say it runs rings around it now that it's not functional at all. Oh come on, you try and be funny when you've been traumatised by software! Reckon Bill Kurtis could still pull it off.