Adobe's revenge on Steve Jobs: HTML5
Despite significant investments from Microsoft, Google, and others, HTML5 remains not quite good enough for a range of apps. So says Mark Zuckerberg, but I also heard that this week from the chief technology officer of a large media company. Rather than gloat over HTML5's long road to native app parity, though, he fretted about …
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Can't we also heap blame on IE?
Sure, Flash is one challenge in HTML5 adoption, but the other, possibly bigger challenge is that festering turd Internet Explorer.
Just run the HTML5Test.com and see that most browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera) are all scoring close to or above 400 out of 500 points. Internet Explorer 9 scores a dismal 138 and IE10 scores a barely adequate 320.
Re: Erm, am I missing something?
You are missing something if you think Jobs was fighting against proprietary video by ditching flash.
safari ONLY really supports proprietary video formats like h.264 a video codec that Apple (with others) is part of the licensing pool for.
It has been the case that those proprietary software vendors have promoted this codec (and other non free codecs) hampering the web for media continually.
Apple and MS et al:
Where is the ogg/vorbis free lossy compressed audio support?
Where is the FLAC free lossless audio support?
Where is the WebM/VP8 or ogg/theora free lossy compressed video support?
Yup Jobs was all about improving the web and moving away from proprietary lock ins...
Re: Erm, am I missing something?
Erm... if you're comparing a Mac only desktop application with a website then I think you may have missed the point.
Re: Erm, am I missing something?
Flash apps? ClubPenguin has 20million users or so.
Arrgh, it's a Matt Asay article
I read all the way to the six-line unabridged employment history at the end before I realised. Now I feel dirty.
Doing What Jobs Urged Them To
When Jobs criticised Adobe over Flash he also made a point of saying they should get involved in HTML 5 and produce tools for it like those they had already built for Flash. In short, he wanted them to do exactly what they are now doing.
Jobs is the one having the last laugh re Flash. He would be very pleased to see how right he was about Flash (dead on Android, dead on Linux, dying on OS X and Windows), and that Adobe are (finally) waking up to the opportunities HTML 5 presents and getting involved with it.
Re: Doing What Jobs Urged Them To
This would be the same company that, for whatever reason, decided that the video of the I-Phone 5 was best run by Javascript from a collection of still images? Apple's motivation then and now was about more control over and less competition for the user.
Re: Doing What Jobs Urged Them To
Tosh. Video on the iPhone always has been h.264 offloaded to the GPU to decode. Adobe wanted to use software decoding and compositing (to add the adverts and overlays) before copying completed frames to VRAM. It's no wonder that Flash video ran like a dog on mobile devices.
Re: Doing What Jobs Urged Them To
"Adobe wanted to use software decoding and compositing (to add the adverts and overlays) before copying completed frames to VRAM"
And? How else do you expect to get interactive video if the hardware only supports streaming playback? Stop coming up with straw men and put forward a proper argumeny.
Re: Doing What Jobs Urged Them To
You've not heard of window overlays? You have a (mostly) transparent window above your hardware decode window that contains your controls, adverts etc. Enough of the stupidity.
Re: Doing What Jobs Urged Them To
"You've not heard of window overlays? You have a (mostly) transparent window above your hardware decode window that contains your controls, adverts etc. Enough of the stupidity."
Ooh , overlays , must be the panacea , oh wait, no they're not.. Because you can't do much if anything to the video stream and there is a delay in sending commands to the hardware.
Re: Doing What Jobs Urged Them To
You honestly think that the delay is perceptible? Even Adobe shifted to that method of playback in later Android builds. Just face the fact that you don't understand the complexities of video playback (including the fact that Adobe's original approach required them to map the video from YUV to RGB colour space before they could apply their overlays) and give in.
Re: Doing What Jobs Urged Them To
"Just face the fact that you don't understand the complexities of video playback"
Thanks, I understand it fine. It appears to be you who seems to think overlays solve all problems. But hey, if that makes you happy in your ignorance good for you...
Re: Doing What Jobs Urged Them To
Even Adobe has changed their methods on that and you defend it.
Re: Doing What Jobs Urged Them To
@Steve Todd - I think you completely misread my post. Check out the following for full details of Apple's perverse approach to openness:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1GWTMLjqQsQS45FWwqNG9ztQTdGF48hQYpjQHR_d1WsI
Re: Doing What Jobs Urged Them To - @Charlie Clark
I think I see the source of your confusion. The problem is that HTML5 doesn't mandate a given video CODEC, and indeed Google Chrome (one of the most popular web browsers) only supports WEBM. The iPhone 5 website had some hacked together code to, I believe, bypass this incompatibility issue.
Personally I think Google are far too late to the table with WEBM (devices with h.264 hardware encode and decode capabilities are ubiquitous, and the cost of adding support is low), but until this sort of standards based argument get sorted out I guess we're likely to see more of this type of hack.
Re: Doing What Jobs Urged Them To
Jobs is the one having the last laugh re Flash. He would be very pleased to see how right he was about Flash (dead on Android, dead on Linux, dying on OS X and Windows),
Yes and no - I mean yes, he was right that it would one day die out, but this was not a difficult prediction - it was clear that HTML5 was planned, and this was clearly the better way forward long term. This was what almost everyone was saying.
But it's also worth nothing that with the IOS devices, it wasn't about dropping Flash to embrace HTML5, but instead to support "apps" as their lock-in. So like, we went from sites that required a closed proprietary application that could run on most platforms, to sites that now require a closed proprietary exe that only runs on one type of hardware! Hardly an improvement - out of the frying pan, into the fire, I'd say. Furthermore, Jobs's actions did nothing to kill Flash, as the response from websites was to make the closed exe for IOS devices, and still use Flash for other platforms; it wasn't to move to HTML5.
Compare this to Google who more recently removed Flash from Android, but they also updated Youtube to use HTML5 (as opposed to requiring you to use an Android-only app).
Flash may be dying, but we should hold off cheering until websites can be accessed through any device, including all mobile devices, using HTML5 and not platform specific closed exes that might or might not work on your device.
Re: Doing What Jobs Urged Them To - @Charlie Clark
The iPhone 5 website had some hacked together code to, I believe, bypass this incompatibility issue.
What complete crap! As the video tag happily accepts different sources so it's easy to have h264, webm and Flash fallback, though you have to do it in that order otherwise Safari sulks in a corner.
No, the only reason that Apple could have had for the convoluted and wasteful approach (painting JPEGs onto the Canvas!) was to stop people saving the video. Oh, and perhaps being able to claim that the page was Flash-free.
H.264 is only go to be royalty-free as long as there is reasonable competition and if you've ever paid for a media encoding software you will know that was not always the case. So, even if WebM is only acting as a cap on H,264 royalties it's a win, but more importantly it has spawned the highly impressive WebP bitmap format which is transparently available (little or no work for site owners) via mod_pagespeed to browsers that support it. A cheaper, faster and better looking internet that degrades gracefully. What's not to like? Oh, not enough polo necks. Yeah, I see what you mean.
Roxio???
"For every Roxio making millions on Angry Birds"
Rovio surely?
Re: HTML5 = vapourware.
You do realise that this very site uses element of HTML5? Go on, check the source. See that doctype declaration..?
It will happen, but not right now.
In the middle of a platform war, the contestants are going to implement a a competing platform that will commoditize their own platform? Yeah, right.
Implementing a full HTML5 browser that will diminish the changes of the native platform is a good strategy for the losers in that platform war. HTML5 will gets its change after the war is over.
Has nobody noticed that
HTML5 tools will (eventually) be written in HTML5 and no-one will give a toss about Apple, Adobe or MS or any other proprietary dog food.
Except for IE6 compatibility of course.
html5 dev tools = browser & text editor
Adobe loves to make everything too complicated. People know to stay away.
P.S. html5 is NOT vapourware. It's a DRAFT standard, like every other relevant internet standard. Yeah, it's got issues, but if you're only supporting recent versions of Chrome/Safari/Firefox, it's probably the least crappy viable platform out there today (which isn't saying much...)
So - this Sesame Workshop?
They haven't been introduced to the web before have they?
Or at least that's the impression I get of someone who finds it annoying that the web won't stand still to let him line up his soldiers. Presumably he'd curl up in a foetal position and cry quietly to himself if someone started telling him the story of Netscape Navigator, IE3 and HTML 1.1/2.0
Adobe's mixed blessing
Some of Adobe's tools can be very useful - Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign - but Flash (originally Macromedia's fault, as a comment earlier noted) should be enough to get their Net access revoked.
To be fair, though, much of the problem with Flash is not the platform itself (though their refusal to do accelerated video on non-Windows platforms for ages was infuriating) but the lousy McProgrammers. Just how can a browser game, less than one-tenth the complexity of Sim City 2000 that ran happily on a 486, max out a 64 bit CPU a hundred times faster - even when doing nothing? Sh**y programming, that's how.
The number of times I hear "Why is my laptop running so hot?" and have to help hunt down the Flash-infected web page wasting all the CPU power, memory and electricity....
Re: Adobe's mixed blessing
So badly programmed Flash will be replaced by badly programmed HTML5 and Javascript. Nothing will change there :)
Flash was too accessible for non-programmers in the early days though, which helped make it successful but also allowed numpties to misuse it with ease. AS3 resolved this to an extent because it was far stricter, but it never shook that reputation.
Re: Adobe's mixed blessing
Actually I'd lay off macromedia.
Fireworks supported png natively and reverse engineered Adobes proprietary .psd file format whilst providing most of the capability at less cost with a focus on screen content.
Dreamweaver supported relatively browser agnostic HTML and attempted to place Macromedia as the Switzerland of the early web format wars.
Flash was the only viable tool for a large portion of web interaction and video playback and had to work with a bunch of crappy audio and video standards.
Had Macromedia held out and ended up buying Adobe, instead of the otherway around flash would have probably morphed into HTML/Open Standards sooner and world peace would be upon us right now...
P.S. Adobe probably bought Macromedia just because their open standard supporting pixel editor had reverse engineered enough of the cash cow .psd lock in to make them seriously concerned...
The divide and conquer game
Who has the control ? Adobe did achieve to get a real edge on the web developments marketplace with portability across platforms via the flash engine at the expense of Google, Microsoft and Apple own respective controls. That is why they did push for Javascript/HTML5 with this last one still unfinished. It's still Divide and Conquer !
Do we still need time to observe and learn. Probably.
I am not a developper just an observer.
HTML is too loose a cannon in aspring app monetisation corporate world.
It is in the interests of Apple, Microsoft and even in some ways Google to undermine the web.
So will Apple and Microsoft sign that petition to keep the web free?
Apple especially, have their financial heart set in a limited web.
$49.99/month for full package in US, £47/month in the UK. Total rip off! US dollar to pound is currently $1= £0.62!!!
I hate it when US companies do this. They also pretend about taxes and say they add that on - yet they don't actually pay taxes in the UK on these sales.
Outrageous. If I need anything I will get it on torrent until they stop making fools out of us in the UK.
What discussion?
You people confuse me, a lot. I was under the impression HTML 5 could be written by hand right now to the fullest available spec. If you need "tools" you could use C++ like a normal human and write you some. Git'R Dun!
Re: What discussion?
You could write it all in notepad. It's quite tricky though...
good
As a web developer, I think this is quite good news. Not everything adobe do is bad, just as not everything apple do is bad.
I recently used a canvas library called easel which brings an equivalent of actionscript straight in to the browser and was most impressed. It turns our, some adobe emplyees are responsible for it. I'm not so much concerned about the overall package but, you have to admit, there are quite a few areas of HTML that need to be buffed up.
I beg adobe not to reinvent the wheel though, use what's already here, maybe basing an SDK kit on jquery in a jquery like manner
"Advance the start of the art for HTML5 functionality"?
That sounds like lot embrace and extend. If Adobe adds their own functionality to HTML5 it won't threaten Apple, it'll prolong the day (if it ever comes) when HTML5 replaces native iOS and Android apps with web apps.
After all, how long did it take for the web to recover from Microsoft's proprietary HTML4 extensions? Given the number of corporations still having trouble migrating from IE6, the clock is still ticking on that little fiasco...
Adobe don't know anything about the Web
To understand how little Adobe know about the Web, look no further than CQ5. It uses a dozen javascript files to provide functionality that the server should be doing. What's more, you can't concatenate those files for a single download because "it may produce unexpected results". They haven't the first clue about how to make a sensible app.
Adobe have no clue about how the web works. Keep them away from HTML5 tools.
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