After reading John Dowdell’s most recent post about Flash vs. Apple and some of his responses to the responses, I feel even more like my mission in life should be to kick him in the fucking junk. He likes to rail against macmacs for being mean and blindly faithful in the decisions made for us by Steve Jobs, like the decision not to include Flash on the iPad.
I have no doubt that Flash not being on the iPad is a result of a decision made by Steve. The market penetration for Flash is insanely high for most types of interactive media, and when Flash is not working, people flip their shit. Why do you think Apple includes the Flash player in its operating system distributions and its own Security Updates? Because Apple recognizes its importance to the Mac-using computer world as a whole. For better or worse, Apple has to support Flash on the Mac.
In terms of supporting it on the Mac side, I’m sure Apple has sifted through thousands of crash logs that people have desperately sent using the “Submit to Apple” button in CrashReporter. You know what has got to be at the top of the fucking list? The goddamn Flash Player plugin. I have little comprehension as to why Apple would develop a completely new plug-in process isolator under OS X 10.6 (only works in 64-bit mode, by the way) unless they were confident the issue could not be solved any other way. Let’s check to see what plug-ins I’ve got installed:
I use SafariAdblock which currently requires 32-bit mode, and that disables the plug-in protection in 10.6. You know what I’ve had crash my browser running in 32-bit mode? Flash. Not Flip4Mac, not the third-party DivX codec I have installed in QuickTime, not the Java plug-in (I do have Java disabled, however), and not Quartz Composer. Not even Shockwave has crashed my browser. It’s all Flash. In fact, the problem got so bad that I almost switched my browsing to FireFox, that ugly piece of shit monstrosity of an open source project, simply because it had the ability to block Flash. Thanks to Gruber, I found ClickToFlash, and my life has once again regained simplicity.
I have a feeling that not many people have anything other than the factory web browser plug-ins installed on their computers, and with Flash being the least stable plug-in on the machines I work on, I have a feeling the process isolation technique was developed to be applicable to future plug-ins, but with one in mind (and let me tell you: it ain’t Flip4Mac.)
Back to Dowdell and his response to commentary. I don’t have hard numbers on if the plug-in isolator has been successful, because I still have people come to me complaining about Farmville not working properly. I have to calmly explain that, with their software (including Flash) updates installed, it is something between the developer and Adobe that will have to be ironed out on their end since there’s not much else to do. I also suggest installing ClickToFlash as a way to prevent Flash from loading unless needed, and most folks are quite happy with the improved experience.
I’m assuming Apple doesn’t want to dedicate the resources to supporting a third-party’s plug-in on a platform that has very sensitive needs with regards to stability and power utilization. Rather than go out of its way to get Adobe’s product working properly on its platform, Apple has tried to get folks adopting technologies that work well on its mobile platform (which also tend to work well on other mobile platforms, not just its own.) I don’t think it will happen in the near term, but in the next 3-5 years, I can see Apple’s investment in less-proprietary technologies causing Mobile Flash to decline to the point of obsolescence in both Apple’s and other vendors’ mobile platforms.
I don’t see Dowdell’s points being relevant, except for the talk about personal attacks being mean. I agree that personal attacks are mean, but I’ve been sick for almost 2 weeks now, and I’m feeling really fucking mean right now. I also like how he approved a comment from someone stating that he’s convinced they aren’t a paid astroturfer. Does John Dowdell really believe that people are paying other people to write negative blog comments about Flash? I think we should coin a new term, the “flasher”.
A “flasher” is one who believes that negative commentary about Adobe in general, or Flash in specific, is coming from some deep dungeon in Cupertino, written by people who anally masturbate to images of Steve Jobs using Safari with a big “Click to Flash” gray box in the middle of the screen. A “flasher” believes that the Flash plug-in code is gospel and that the interpretation or execution of the code is the cause of its problems. A “flasher” believes that if it weren’t for Apple’s walled garden, the performance of the plug-in would be at parity between the two major operating systems. ”Flashers” are the Adobe equivalent of truthers and birthers. I don’t think it needs much more explanation.
I think that John Dowdell’s continued presence anywhere in public while being paid by Adobe is the worst possible idea Adobe could ever make. They would be better off doubling his salary and making him ride a stationary bicycle in their basement to generate a little bit of power for the office. Adobe would get more out of him that way, and it would cost them less in terms of their public opinion in the long run.
As a side note, the comment I linked to above appears to have been made by someone working for Unsanity. For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, they are the creators of Application Enhancer, one of the least stable and most frustrating additions for OS X I’ve ever encountered. I don’t see it around much any more, but back in the day, APE caused a lot of shit to break on a fairly regular basis. And when the authors of that software are complaining about your product, it might be worth paying attention.