Now you're repeating yourself, and I point you back to u17's comment. The question of Flash plugins is a totally separate problem decoupled from H264. Free software implementations of the <video> tag will not be able to handle H264 either.
You're confusing the issue by mixing two separate problems.
Funny that you conveniently forgot to mention subtitles, translations, captions, and links.
Nono, don't change it. Your argument sounds better when you spin and skew. You report, we decide.
I read Steve Fulton's article that you linked. The gist is that nobody has yet written support libraries for Canvas-based game development.
On top of the fact that there aren't support libraries, it's also that the core API doesn't support basic functionality needed by game developers (such as playing two copies of the same sound simultaneously -- I.E. gunshots or explosions).
My cousin. He and others in his position have far more time than money, which is why they stick to Free or otherwise free tools. Imagine a high school student on summer break whose school isn't on the list of schools that get a discount on Flash CS5. These people are likely to be the people who write the support libraries that Canvas currently lacks.
Then he might be one of the people who is interested in the free and open-source compiler that Adobe released several years back. FlashDevelop is one of the best free tools for doing Flash development, though there are many many others.
I developed several games in Flash before I ever paid a single dime to Adobe -- using only free and open-source tools.
The guys over at 8BitRocket posted an evaluation of some of what it takes to write an equivalent game in AS3 and HTML5. You may find it informative.
Staunch anti-Flash posters will sing the praises of HTML5 for games.
I would guess that they haven't actually tried to program in both of them.
If you can find an actual game developer who prefers HTML5 over Flash (based on their development experiences), then by all means please post a link. While they might exist, I've not yet met one, and I see far more who have tried HTML5... but ultimately stuck with Flash.
This is not just about the H.264 decoder.
Yes, thanks, I'm aware. Darth asked why noone was addressing the hardware acceleration issue. I addressed it. Read the context -- I never said it was the only reason Flash sucks.
Apple says that Adobe is dog-lazy. All I'm saying is that Apple is dog-lazy too, and Steve's letter painted an inaccurate picture by only telling half of the story.
Hardware-accelerate h.264 wasn't and isn't the reason Flash sucks.
Darth Snowshoe said "what about the HW vs SW argument?" I answered his question, and never extended my reply to claim that hardware acceleration was the sole reason why Flash sucks. I merely said that this letter from Steve was less than up front about the reasons why nobody had hardware accelerated video before April of this year. While Adobe may be "lazy" in their own rights, Apple is "lazy" too. If Apple is getting blamed for Flash's crashes, then Adobe is getting blamed for Apple's lack of hardware acceleration. Tit for tat and all that, but Apple only told one side of this story in Steve's "letter". Apple has been dragging their feet on this for much of the last decade, and I think it's unfair for Adobe to have to take all the fall on this.
Silverlight plays h.264 video without this magical cure-all API...
It's hardly a magical cure-all. Both of my Macbook Pros are dual-core with 2 gigs of RAM running the latest Apple OS/X, but neither of them are supported by Apple's new hardware acceleration API because they're 2 years old, and not supported by Apple's API. That gives me warm fuzzies, lemme' tell ya'.
...at a fraction of the CPU usage of Flash player. In fact, Silverlight still bests the 10.1 beta (Flash uses the newly publicized API; Silverlight does not).
Citations please -- I'm not finding these benchmarks, and your statement smacks strongly of hyperbole.
Besides, Silverlight 4 does use hardware acceleration, and does use this new API, so I'm not sure where you're getting your (mis)information. You're obviously out of date, and I'm starting to distrust the authority of your words.
Two things. First, that blog entry doesn't have anything to do with the new h.264 API access.
Darth Snowshoe's post did, which is what I replied to. Did you read the quote block at the beginning of my post? It's called context.
Second, notice what's buried in that blog? That it took until 10.1 to rewrite Flash in Cocoa (thus opening up to them a whole world of APIs that Flash could have been using)--and it still falls back to Carbon in most usage scenarios.
Thanks -- Adobe is no saint. The main point of my post is that Apple needs its own fair share of the blame as to why there isn't good hardware accelerated video in Flash or Silverlight. Apple has been very lazy, and they're trying to paint themselves as free, open, fair-minded, and never lazy -- when the actual situation is a lot muddier than that. This is slanted Apple whitewashing propaganda, and as a Mac user, I find it distasteful. Don't get me wrong -- my wife and I have only owned Macs for several years now -- we love the operating system and the hardware. But intellectual integrity demands that I cannot accept Steve's letter as gospel truth -- there is quite a bit he has left out, and it's only half the picture.
You say h.264 acceleration was to blame.
No. If you read my post, you would see that I was addressing Darth's accusation that everyone was failing to address Flash's lack of hardware acceleration. I was merely trying to set the record straight that -- up until this month -- nobody did because there was no operating system support. That was the point of my post. You need to read the context of posts that you're replying to before you accuse them of saying things that they aren't.
How was Microsoft able to deliver a better product without whining? Why is Silverlight's performance, lacking any hardware acceleration, still better than the hardware-accelerated Flash beta?
Silverlight 4 does use hardware acceleration on OS/X. Regarding your accusation -- I'm not saying Silverlight's software renderer isn't better than Adobe's -- it very well may be. But I've not yet found any data to back up your claim that Silverlight's software renderer is superior to the Apple beta. So I'll end this post by reiterating my earlier [citation needed].
Because I would like to have a more open web experience, that lets me view web content at my discretion.
I want an operating system that does what I tell it to do -- not a nanny that slaps me on the hand and refuses to do what I say because they somehow know better than me.
The HTML5 audio support isn't even close to Flash.
Anyone with a "basic clue" wouldn't spend their time seriously writing apps in HTML5 if something more reasonable like Flash were available. Write your game's audio synthesizer / mixer in HTML5, and then do it in Flash, and lemme' know how much HTML5 has "going for it".
In HTML5, you can't even play two copies of the same sound at the same time. It's a joke for any reasonable game development. If you think that HTML5 is a serious competitor to Flash, then that tells me that one or both of the following are true: 1) You haven't seriously developed in both HTML5 and Flash, and/or 2) You've completely bought into Steve Job's reality distortion field where HTML5 is somehow a drop-in replacement for Flash.
Likewise, what about the HW vs SW argument? It's easy for code developers, some of whom I'm guessing have invested a fair about of time and training in becoming adept at flash, to just wave their arms and say "battery life is somebody else's problem". Well, yes, the hardware manufacturer's, for one. Here is a hardware manufacturer's response. Etc.
Okay, let's talk about the HW vs SW argument. Adobe needed API support from Apple before they could add hardware video decoding to their Flash Player. This API was only added in OSX 10.6.3, and even then, won't even run on my Macbook Pro, because it's older than a year and a half old, and Apple is not (yet?) providing API support for older hardware. You can rest assured, that now that Apple has finally provided an API for developers to use, Adobe has jumped on it, but due to Apple's half-way job of it, much of Apple hardware is not supported.
Oh right, I forgot -- I'm supposed to believe Adobe has been the sole lazy company here. Adobe recognizes they have more resources available that they're not yet utilizing -- but these were only recently made available by Apple.
Somehow Steve forgot to mention this in his tirade, didn't he? Convenient.
Force needed to accelerate 2.2lbs of cookies = 1 Fig-newton to 1 meter per second
