back to article Google promises what Jobs hates in next Android

In his epic attack on Adobe Flash, Steve Jobs asks - in typically haughty fashion - when Flash will actually ship on a smartphone. Well, an older version of Flash has shipped on smartphones, and just before Jobs unloaded his open letter, Adobe's new BFF committed to putting the latest Flash on the world's second most important …

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  1. GregC

    Flash is on at least one smartphone right now, thanksverymuch...

    "In his epic attack on Adobe Flash, Steve Jobs asks - in typically haughty fashion - when Flash will actually ship on a smartphone."

    Last November I think. Or did I imagine it working on my N900?*

    1. Nexox Enigma

      Indeed...

      I was going to mention that. Apparently the N900 never happened, and we don't actually have them at all. (I'm not looking at one on my desk right now either, right?)

      Not that I mind, but El Reg has largely ignored the N900 (seemingly) in favor of daily articles detailing Apple's latest hijinks.

      Also, even though flash /does/ work just great on my N900, I leave it disabled all the time, just like I do on my desktops, because almost nothing in flash is worth my time anyway. And those nasty flash ads really kill spotty 3G connections.

      1. Gene Cash Silver badge
        Thumb Down

        EVERYBODY ignored the N900...

        Heck, I have an N800 and Nokia's behaviour towards the developers has ensured I'll never buy another Nokia device.

    2. Craigness
      Thumb Up

      Orwellian

      It sometimes seems people believe Apple invented the mp3 player, smartphone and tablet computer. Soon they will have invented the eBook reader. The ipologists will find it easy to believe the N900 does not exist*, because they want to believe, because they love Big Apple.

      "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act."

      * and the N810.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Go

        no of course apple didnt invent them

        They just made them worth actually owning.... if you dont believe me checkout all the major companies that bandwagon on apple products.

        1. heyrick Silver badge

          Creative Zen

          I'm quite happy with my Zen, thank you. Before that, a little practically no-name player that offered good sound and a simple UI coupled with a decent sized Flash chip. No need for Apple here.

          FWIW, I understand "MPMan" were the creators of the first portable MP3 player. Quite a surprise given I've always figured on them being cheap'n'cheerful stuff based around lower-end SoC designs (their MP3Fiesta is a DSP hooked to what is effectively a souped-up (~40MHz) Z80, perhaps that is why it is slow; a league away from the Zen's (~200MHz) ARM9... but you could say the same for the display technology in each device too (MP4F=icky, Zen=sublime)).

          Doesn't need to have an Apple logo to make it worth owning, it just needs to work.

          Companies bandwagon because if you stop people on the street and say "name an MP3 player", the majority will say "iPod". I just asked my mother. She said "iPod". I doubt she could point to one in a magazine list, nor tell me any attributes of it, and I'm not even sure if she knows who makes them... but she knows the iPod is an MP3 player. That is why companies want to bandwagon and been seen to be "like the iPod" in whatever way.

  2. Steven Raith
    Unhappy

    Flash apps on android - I suppose. In the browser though....

    ...please god no.

    Phone browsing has come a long way since WAP and early GPRS 'mobile web' stuff. Lets not cripple it by letting flash ads turn my mobile web experience into something reminiscent of the early 2000s in terms of page load times and rendering performance on anything other than truly top flight phones, please...

    Steven R

    1. Quxy
      FAIL

      Flash on a 550 MHz Cortex??

      My god, even if they use the DSP as a co-processor, Flash is going to bring Android to its knees on any existing smartphone. Unless they add Flash blocking to the browser (or Fennec turns out to be a lot less bloated than the alpha version), that's enough reason not to upgrade from 2.1 to 2.2. I shudder at the thought of destroying what is - on the whole - a pretty good browsing experience for the sake of lame games and in-your-face adverts.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Ads

        >a pretty good browsing experience for the sake of lame games and in-your-face adverts.

        Ads don't need Flash to be in-your-face though do they? Personally I don't want to waste bandwidth downloading any kind of ads.

        Nice thing about Android is it allows you to avoid them. In Web content just use one of the many ad blockers for your Android browser of choice. On ad funded Apps under Android, you can generally opt out of in application adverts by buying them instead of using the free version. There are plenty of alternates for those few which are solely ad funded.

        What are the odds on Apple releasing an adblocker for iPhone?

        1. Quxy
          Happy

          Flash blocking

          "Web content just use one of the many ad blockers for your Android browser of choice."

          Fortunately, it's likely that Flash blockers will arrive in the Android Market shortly after 2.2 is released. God knows that NoScript is the only thing that keeps web browsing from becoming terminally frustrating -- and that's on my high-end workstation.

          No, I'm not about to switch back to the iPhone after having used Android 2.1!

  3. Daleos

    How long is Steve Jobs' nose?

    HTC Hero has also had Flash since mid 2009

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZLOndllpUM

  4. Dr.Forbin

    The enemy of my enemy is ...

    Just one more thing that Google is trying to do to gain some market share from Apple iphone, trying to demonstrate another thing that the Android Operating systems does, that the Iphone OS system does not do. It's true that Google has some vested interest in flash, for media presentation for their You-Tube site; But you know that there are a bunch of Google Computer Engineers, using their 10 percent time

    devising a demonstration of running videos on You-Tube using HTML5, CSS, and javascript, all running in a "GoogleWizy" -TM, a flash to (HTML5, CSS, javascript) native computer binary compiler.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not Google...

      >Google is trying to do to gain some market share from Apple iphone

      Adobe also have 10.1 coming out for RIM, Palm, Microsoft and Nokia in June.....

  5. Michael C
    FAIL

    n900has NO flash

    It has flash LITE, which is not Flash.

    Here's some data:

    http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/version/flashlite_feature_comparison.pdf

    Primarily, lack of support for bitmap graphics means it can't display the vast majority of Flash content on the web.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      not flash lite.

      Umm - bullshit.

      It's flash 9.4 - not flash lite.

      Basically everthing that does not require flash 10 works.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Michael C?

      More like Michael D minus...

      Thickarse.

    3. mdoherty-adobe
      WTF?

      No support for Bitmap graphics?

      Nokia's N900 and the PS3 both have full Flash Player 9 and are based on the Linux desktop code base, not Flash Lite.

      The feature comparison table clearly describes that the BitmapData class is partially supported. That's not bitmap image support, but rather the ability to alter the image bytes at runtime. As a developer you would use it to apply tints to your photos, or create highly efficient caches.

      Do you honestly think we'd ship a Flash runtime without the ability to display images? :-)

      Mark Doherty

      Adobe

    4. michaelh
      Thumb Down

      Your post is aptly labelled "fail"

      N900 has a full version of Flash 9.4, not Flash Lite. It's the real deal (unless what you're using relies on flash 10 stuffs)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The one argument against Flash..

    .. is the ever increasing amount of "grow big" ads the moment you hit a website. Before you can read anything, the stupid thing blows up, or one of these things whizzes across the screen, leading you to the next challenge: finding the "close" button.

    Welcome back, AdBlock.

    Having said that, if Jobs thinks he can dictate what I can or cannot use he can do things to himself that are not mentioned in polite society. I'm sick and tired of people deciding for me what I should have access to - that's still my own decision.

    1. bothwell

      against flash?

      Does anybody even still use Flash for that? Every time I see one of those things it's written with jQuery.

  7. Nathan

    Damned if you do...

    Seems to me like you're slating Apple for not having Flash on the phone, yet slating Google for putting Flash on android! Leave flash, it's dying. Slowly and painfully, but it's not as useful as it was in '04

  8. mafoo

    Next version is...

    "...promised that the next version of the company's mobile OS..."

    I'm confused as to wether that will be the version of android available to OEMs or the Nexus One version thats a few steps ahead?

    1. ThomH

      Re: the Nexus One

      I'm confused as to how Flash was demoed on the Nexus One somewhere every close to its launch, igniting another round of "obviously Flash works on mobiles" chat, but apparently still isn't available?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Well to me ...

    ... the issue really is mobile-battery powered device versus mains powered device.

    It really is as simple as that.

    In a mains powered device things cater for profligate use of resources. It doesn't really matter provided there is enough oomph in a system to carry the additional loads.

    On mobile, battery powered devices (an emerging thing in eye of the consumer but uz wizer doodz kno bout such tingz from yeerz ago yes?) profligate equates to poor consumer experience in terms of time lags and battery drain.

    One way around that is a hand in glove arrangement between hardware, operating system and processes. The tighter the fit the better the experience yes?

  10. Neil 7
    FAIL

    @n900has NO flash

    The N900 has Flash Player 9.5, dumbass.

  11. I have a handle! go me!
    Boffin

    history

    we need to remember history here. Flash is not Adobe IP or design, they acquired it when they swallowed up Macromedia. Then they sat on their fat arses and did nothing to move it along. Why should they, they just ate their only serious competition in the graphics market. Apple are now in a position to call them on it. Flash died the day it got Adobe written on it's box. Also, threatening Apple with 'well the rest of the crowd like us' shows a staggering lack of insight; going against the crowd is Apple's DNA. Their corporate tag is 'think different'. If Adobe think they can pick a fight with one of the world's most innovative companies with technology that effectively died in 2004, I would love to know what they are smoking.

  12. Munkey

    Marketing Prowess != Most Innovative ↑

    Apple have pinched tech from all over the place (same as any other monopoly). But I also want to know what they are smoking...!

  13. heyrick Silver badge

    While we're talking Android...

    In my local supermarket is a small laptop, looks like an eeePC (but it isn't). Similar spec (Atom N270 or whatever, biggish harddisc, decent wodge of RAM). It claims to dual-boot Windows7 or Android.

    A mobile-smartphone oriented OS on a laptop!? A non-ARM one at that. Have I missed something?

    1. max allan

      Err, it's an OS

      It's an OS. You just need to recompile it for your CPU and make sure you've got drivers for the relevant hardware and away you go. No magic required.

      (Actually quite a lot of magic, but the end result is that it works)

      There are a couple of "PC" compatible android distros running now. You can easily run them in a VM if you want to play.

  14. Lynxus
    Stop

    N900

    Has the N900 been mentioned yet? Yes?

    Oh I better not mention the fact that it has flash and pretty much anything else a desktop linux computer will have.

    Screen not big enough? Well you can use Rdesktop, SSH or Just plug the N900 into your TV.

    ..

    Ahhh sorrrry... i cant hear you over the Apple fans screaming that they can do it too.

    What?

    They cant?

  15. Lynxus
    WTF?

    While where here..

    Why wont people just admit that Nokia made a great phone with the N900.

    It really feels like if you dont have an Iphone ,- Your left behind?...

    Well whats worrying is Iphone / Ianything users are being left behind, But blind advertising is blurring anything the general public should see.

    The Reg need to do a proper, Get this phone N900 review.

    No more. Ohhhh flash coming to a handset near you.

    No more. Beep beep whatever next coming soon.

    Its there,

    It works.

    Lets ignore it yeah?

  16. Watashi

    Symbian blackspot

    My Nokia 5800 smartphone allows me to play flash-based Facebook games through SkyFire. The upcoming Nokia N8 will play .flv files natively in its media player. OK, Symbian may have its faults, and Nokia is undergoing a minor crisis, but the fact is that in many ways it's is a much more mature smartphone OS than either Android or iPhone OS. Yet everyone seems to ignore it!

    Multitasking: check

    Themes & wallpaper: check

    Folder structure for apps: check

    Syncronise Exchange emails, contacts, calendar and tasks: check

    Flash support: check

    Windows Live and Skype apps: check

    Video calls: check

    Google maps with network assisted GPS and streetview: check

    Free satnav software: check

    Wi-fi to 3.5G tethering app: check

    Augmented reality: check

    Apple has the media in its pocket. It's a marketing company that does technology.

  17. James Billingham
    Grenade

    WTF?

    Bit confused by this article - my HTC desire plays flash just fine. BBC embedded iplayer stuff, annoying ads, games.... Its even not that bad although the iPlayer stuff does not feel as smooth as the PC. Going to the adobe flash test page says I have version 10,1,123,391 installed...

    Flash GUIMark I got average FPS of 6.12fps, not too bad when my dual core laptop only got 19.5fps

  18. Dwayne
    FAIL

    A big deal about nothing...

    What a joke - I'm certainly not going to rush out and purchase a handset just because has flash on it.

  19. Watashi

    American Graffiti

    I've just realised why there is always so little mention of Nokia and Symbian smartphones on The Register these days - most of the journalists are in the US! Nokia hasn't really got the hang of the US market, and so most of those who write for the US don't really know much about the day-to-day experience of using a recent release Nokia smartphone. These journalists probably don't know that all those things people complain about the iPhone not having are all already available on Nokia models. Oh, and the hardware is better - network supported gps, 2 and 3G signal quality and download speeds are all better on Nokia phones than the iPhone.

    C'mon, El Reg - time to nail your colours to the mast. Are you essentially a US-based journal now?

    1. Paul 4

      Nokia hasn't really got the hang of the US market

      Can't help thinking thats because they won't bung jurnos huge wadges of cash/freebies.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      No...

      It's 'cause they are shite.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    If I'm paying for the bandwith...

    I don't want media and the accompanying data charges that go with it that I don't want. Much as google most probably want ads they get paid for to reach a vast new "audience" I'd rather not pay for the privilege.

    Economically, an extra pint would be more affordable...

  21. Stuart 22

    Choice

    Some Flash stuff is essential (like mine), other stuff is a total pain. As long as I can choose whether to view or not I'm happy. Having somebody like Jobs dictating what I can and cannot see is not acceptable.

    Hence no Apple stuff here. Microsoft are pussy cats by comparison. I never thought I would write that ...

  22. KjetilS
    WTF?

    Omnia HD?

    My Omnia HD plays flash as well (and that runs Symbian). I really can't see how flash on the phone is any news?

  23. Captain Thyratron
    Coat

    On the other hand,

    the iPhone supports blipverts.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    @Watashi

    "Apple has the media in its pocket. It's a marketing company that does technology."

    Mark my words: In a few months time people who bought iPads are going to feel resentful about them. They're the graphic equaliser or the sandwich toaster of the computing world. They'll be fun to play with but once the novelty wears off and once they realise all the downsides in a real-world situation, they'll go back to using a laptop. If you're thinking of getting one, wait it out and see what starts appearing on eBay.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google's position

    Google and Apple are enemies. Apple and Adobe are enemies. There is a saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." ... at least until the Apple loyal wake up to Jobs' attitude and the number of Apple fanbois start to dwindle.

    I've been messing around with Ubuntu 10.04 over the weekend. Nice piece of kit ... it has promise and works especially smoothly on my netbook ... except, strangely, 64 bit flash on the desktop :-( All we need now is for Adobe to team up with Canonical and Apple will get it on three sides.

    What is needed is for the WAGs to get a grip; (refering to previous article) a bloke touting an iPhone doesn't necesseraly mean they're rich these days; it just means that they are willing to splash their cash which means less in their bank account for the washing machine or tumble drier.

    Then again, how many women/blokes have got the smarts to recognise a potential partner who uses their money wisely on lower priced tech that actually assists someone in living their life ... rather than someone who flashes the cash on a technological posing pouch with a lack of features and censored content, used by someone who doesn't have a life? I know which I'd rather go for with a view to long term financial stability.

    OK, so the theory only goes so far, but at least with a Porche, two can sit in it.

    (hastily look on the Ovi store for an X6 app to raise a firewall shield)

  26. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    What "progress towards truly open technologies"?

    I think Google isn't "stunting the progress towards truly open technologies" because there isn't any. There is progress towards closed technologies - patented video or audio format, exclusive development systems. We need to keep at least diverse and competing options if we can't have fully open ones for everything. Thus, Flash, Java, .Net as long as it isn't allowed to take over your entire life, even JavaScript.

    As for content bloat, I don't see a problem with Flash until I have a dozen web pages open at once. Unfortunately I do most of the time, but I'm also mostly using Opera with very convenient control over web page content, including even images which I can see when I want to and not when I don't, on a per-page basis and with a single keystroke to change.

  27. markp 1
    WTF?

    The man has clearly lost the plot.

    I have in my pocket right now a midrange (cost nothing to upgrade), year-old N79, which is at least the second generation of its line to come with Flash on. OK, sure, it's flash lite, but it works ok for most purposes, and it's better than nothing.

    It doesn't even count as a proper smartphone if you take away the symbian capability - the CPU is a bit weak, no touchscreen or hi-rez, etc. But it has the adobe code. What is Jobs on about? Its like every day is another opportunity to lead those who actually listen to him into an alternative fantasy world that doesn't actually exist.

    After all, half the entries in your "top 10 early iPad apps" were things I can already do on this selfsame phone about as well - either they're apps coded to let you access data on websites that the Pad can't natively manage but most other mobile net devices can, or fairly simplistic things that are covered by built-in programs or hardware on the majority of non-apple systems (and at least a couple more, i think pay-for? apps did nothing more than free downloadable java widgets I already have). Very disappointing. I think the device itself is - or at least could be - an awesome evolution of the Tablet PC idea into something genuinely useful and user friendly (instant on, bespoke OS/UI etc) if only they'd open it up a little more, bring in the ability to use a few other entrenched standards rather than pretending they don't exist/aren't important (the funny thing being that Adobe is something of a big deal on Apple's desktop machines), and stop more-or-less lying about everything in their adverts and marketing.

    I mean, doctors are already looking at it as a great diagnostic tool (with an achingly expensive custom app), and there are other examples of very clever niche use... and the remaining apps on your list, whilst fairly useless, sure are pretty and fun-looking. But whilst it's crippled and having to make do with pretty much an extra app for every worthwhile website, yet being pushed as a panacea to all society's problems, I can't see me getting one.

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