back to article Adobe's future is controlling what you watch, not delivering it

Adobe's decision to stop developing mobile Flash shouldn't surprise: Adobe can see there's more money in preventing people watching stuff than enabling them to do so. The news came on the back of 750 layoffs and a refocusing of the company which will see Adobe "investing aggressively in Digital Media and Digital Marketing" – …

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  1. DZ-Jay

    Keep telling yourself that...

    And eventually, possibly, it'll come true.

    -dZ.

  2. JDX Gold badge

    40D

    Um, aren't C4 in the midst of a big advertising campaign about how you can access it on the iPhone? Or is that only for non-iOS devices?

    1. It'sa Mea... Mario

      There is a 4OD app now yes, you would have thought it would have been mentioned, but I'm guessing Bill was reffering to the actual website.

    2. gopal

      4od on iPad

      yeah C4 have an iPad app.

    3. ThomH

      The article is slightly misleading

      If you go to YouTube, 4OD content won't appear because of the lack of DRM on delivery. That's in contrast to devices with Flash and explains the niche that the author argues Adobe are now pursuing.

      However, you can watch as much 4OD content as you like on your iOS device through the 4OD app.

  3. Twm Davies

    I've been using Channel 4's 4OD app happily for a month on my iPhone.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No doubt this comment section will soon be flooded with complaints, as this article contains a fairly significant factual error. There is a 4OD app for iOS.

    However, the point of the article actually does hold true - DRM in that case it obtained by the fact that the iOS device won't run unapproved third party code, and Apple block all stream rippers. Yes, jailbreakers can get around it, but that's really getting to the same of technical obscurity that is bypassing virtually any DRM. So in essence most media companies have provided DRMed streams to general purpose computing platforms such as a PC or Android, or more standards based streams to closed devices (such as iOS) that won't do anything but play them regardless.

    If Flash (and Silverlight if rumours are true) are going away (and if they don't work on mobile their desktop death is inevitable), then what we're going to see isn't the widespead adoption of HTML5 as a streaming format, it's going to be a massive push against using the web to distribute this content, which will move to proprietary apps. Some of these might well be powered by Adobe AIR, but not necessarily, and AIR doesn't even work on Linux any more so it's hardly a cross platform solution. This will inevitably lead to more fagmentation and minority platforms being locked out of this content even more than they already are. Meanwhile the closed device providers will manage distribution of the apps with all the potential for censorship of content they don't like or strongarming a revenue share they do virtually nothing to justify. And the web will no longer have any of these resources to link to specifically, as they'll be hidden away in the apps away from semantic linking for example.

    And this is the brave new world of internet "freedom" some people have been chomping at the bit for. Sigh. Minority platforms denied half the web and you've replaced content industry middlemen who at least had an incentive to invest in new talent development with Apple as a middleman who don't give a toss about the content at all, other than to make sure they can enforce their conservative values on what you should be allowed to see.

    1. Mike Flugennock

      True dat, but...

      "And this is the brave new world of internet "freedom" some people have been chomping at the bit for. Sigh. Minority platforms denied half the web and you've replaced content industry middlemen who at least had an incentive to invest in new talent development with Apple as a middleman who don't give a toss about the content at all, other than to make sure they can enforce their conservative values on what you should be allowed to see."

      Luckily, for "citizen journalists", there's local hosting of video and, of course, the Community Video archive at archive.org, where I have an account, and where I've already begun uploading the best of my "samizdat newsreels" I originally posted on YouTube and my city's local Indymedia.

      Back To The Future.

      That is all.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Whine, whine, whine

      My platform isn't supported, story is about Adobe therefore Apple are evil!

  5. Synonymous Howard
    FAIL

    iPad FAIL ...

    Fail for the Author that is 8-)

    There are free and native iPad apps for 4OD, BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, BBC News (live News24 streaming and videos) and also, of course, http://ipad.tvcatchup.com/ for live freeview streaming. Plus the built-in YouTube player works very well.

    Oh and if you have an AppleTV you can AirPlay stream most of those over to that as well [BBC News only streams audio over AirPlay though!].

    And if you have a Mac + Elgato EyeTV tuner(s) you can stream that live tv and recordings to the iPad (and also on to the AppleTV).

    It "just works" (tm).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      One Fatal flaw

      Apple: it just over priced (tm)

    2. Synonymous Howard

      forgot to add...

      You can stream / load / play any non-DRM h.264 video on an iPad as well. Transcode streaming is available with apps such as "Air Play", "VLC Streamer", "ML Player", etc.

      Let me say that again ... you can play ANY non-DRM video on an iPad as well. "Fair Use" stripping of DRM from DVDs is also easy these days, so BUY'em and rip'em .. disk space is cheap (well, was until a few weeks ago).

      DRM is a short term "necessary evil" .. necessary for the content providers to think they can protect their wares from freeloaders .. I can put up with that if it keeps the content flowing.

  6. Mectron

    KILL IT

    Flash is a abobination ON ALL PLATFORM. Adobe should be fined for releasing it. it is bloated, slow, unefficient and extremly insecure..... it should be clasified as a MALEWARE.

    1. Synonymous Howard

      MALEWARE?

      Real Men (tm) use Flash?

  7. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Even if you hate Apple

    their decision not to allow Flash on their devices is probably going to help a lot of other devices as well.

    Flash should be consigned to the trashcan/wastebasket of history.

    Paris, coz even she knows when it is time to give up.

  8. Spud2go
    Pint

    umm - question?

    "But YouTube doesn't just use Flash to deliver video: it also uses Adobe's DRM to prevent viewers skipping the adverts or lifting videos with too much ease."

    You're kidding, right? Unless I'm reading this wrong, there are any one of a number of add-ons or browser techniques out there that let one nab YouTube content with relative ease.

    1. Shades

      Does what now?

      1. Goto YouTube.

      2. Search for video.

      3. Click on 1 button.

      4. Choose from all available resolutions (including 720p/1080p if available) in either FLV or MP4

      5. Recover from the stess of it all!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    HTML 5

    I think you all missed this part:

    "Adobe hasn't even given up on Flash on mobile, it just wants the technology to be used to create applications rather than streaming video around the place. Adobe's AIR is a cross-platform development environment based on Flash, which was used to develop TweetDeck among other things. TweetDeck runs across Windows, Mac and Linux in just the way that Java applications were supposed to do"

    Future elreg comments:

    HTML is an abomination! It's so slow and insecure.

    Current reality:

    If you want to write cross browser, compiled, strongly typed applications, Flash/Flex is hard to beat. Silverlight tried. Silverlight failed.

  10. mark l 2 Silver badge

    Youtube video rippers

    Where the youtube video rippers/downloaders will happily download the videos of cats playing the piano or people falling off bikes from youtube if you go to the TV shows section and try the same thing you will find you won't be able to download the videos (well none of the ones i have tried worked)

    I still feel pissed off that iOS gets native apps for iplayer and 4OD yet Android owners are told to just using the flash version. My phone (Orange San fran) doesn't support flash so that won't work for me and all the 3rd party software such as beebplayer have been closed down. So the only choice for me is to rip the streams on my pc using getiplayer and then copy them to the SD card on my phone where they will happily play. The sooner flash on phones is killed off the better in my opinion

    1. Mike Flugennock

      re: YouTube video rippers

      "Where the youtube video rippers/downloaders will happily download the videos of cats playing the piano or people falling off bikes from youtube if you go to the TV shows section and try the same thing you will find you won't be able to download the videos (well none of the ones i have tried worked)..."

      Well, I'm using the ultra-nifty YouTube video sucker available at

      http://mp4downloader.mozdev.org/drupal/download/firefox

      ...and while I haven't tried to download any current TV shows -- because, quite frankly, most of them are shit and I'm not into them anyway -- I've had no trouble at all downloading entire movies (OK, so it was an old Tarzan picture from the early '30s) as well as entire episodes of MST3K (yeah, I'm really into MST3K; you got a problem with that?) and a metric shit-tonne of old Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons.

      Besides, for me, the YouTube ripper has proven most important for stuff like ripping mp4's of police-brutality footage from Occupy sites (the ones Google claims they won't censor) as well as Reuters and Russia Today segments on events in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Greece and Occupy sites in the USA.

      Basically, I'm not so bugged if I can't rip a copy of a "30 Rock" episode from YouTube, because I'm too busy downloading footage from Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Oakland, the Athens general strikes, and the uprisings in Syria and Bahrain before they're "scrubbed".

      1. Neill Mitchell

        re: YouTube video rippers

        "Well, I'm using the ultra-nifty YouTube video sucker available at

        http://mp4downloader.mozdev.org/drupal/download/firefox"

        It doesn't work with 4OD content. Like the article clearly says, it's DRMed.

        "...and while I haven't tried to download any current TV shows "

        Perhaps you should next time before posting?

  11. Mike Flugennock

    a plug-in I love almost as much as NoScript:

    http://mp4downloader.mozdev.org/drupal/download/firefox

    That is all.

    1. Neill Mitchell

      Sadly, DRM is doing its job as stated.

      "http://mp4downloader.mozdev.org/drupal/download/firefox

      That is all."

      Unfortunately it is not all. Like the article clearly states, 4OD content on YouTube is DRMed and the downloader mentioned above cannot download.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Adobe's future is chapter 11

    Adobe, you're too old, let go, it's over, nobody uses your bloatware.

    1. Neill Mitchell

      LOL

      "nobody uses your bloatware."

      Adobe is more than just Flash you know. Photoshop, Acrobat, InDesign etc. I think you'll find Adobe apps are the de-facto standard in a large number of vertical markets.

      Let's not even get into how widespread Flash is, but nothing lasts forever and Adobe has acknowledged this. Guess who sells the most web content creation software? So whether Flash or HTMML5, Adobe will be there making a lot of money.

      I mean really AC, engage at least one brain cell before posting :D

  13. Alan Denman

    Are you a Flash moron?

    There's a billion apps for that!

  14. Alan Denman

    play ball or we boot you out of our APP store.

    Obviously the decided that the proprietary nature of most mobile systems means their future is on very insecure.

    Playing ball gives their app development kit a better chance of survival.

    Again it is a farce that we will need an APP for every single DRM laden web site.

    Goodbye open web.

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