May 25, 2012 - 05:30 PM EDT — AAPL: 562.29 (-3.03, -0.54%) | NASDAQ: 2837.53 (-1.85, -0.07%)

Adobe Flash hobbles Android use of BBC iPlayer versus iPhone

Sunday, August 29, 2010 · 10:30 am · 41 Comments

“A Freedom of Information request to the BBC completed just Thursday has revealed that Android use of iPlayer may have been hurt, rather than helped, by the use of Flash,” Electronista reports. “As the Android version of iPlayer requires the still-rare Flash plugin to work, British viewers streamed just 6,400 episodes in July. In comparison, 5,272,464 shows streamed to iPad, iPhone and iPod touch owners.”

Advertisement: The iPad. With a 9.7″ touch screen & amazing new apps, it does things no tablet PC, netbook, or e-reader could. Starts at $499. Shop Now.

“Much of the damage to Android has been done by OS and device fragmentation,” Electronista reports.

Electronista reports, “iOS devices were meanwhile helped by the BBC’s decision early on to use raw H.264 video and a native app. The format reduces the overhead to where even a 2007-era iPhone can play videos, and the approach is largely independent of any one iOS version. Battery use may also be lighter due to a reduced dependence on the main processor compared to Flash.”

Thank You for supporting MacDailyNews!

♥ Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended for Mac - Student and Teacher Edition DVD (65171323) only $249!
♥ Blowout: Apple 15.4" MacBook Pro i7/4Core/2.0GHz/4GB/500GB (MC721LL/A) only $1,549.99 + Free Shipping from MacMall
♥ Mac Madness Save 25% on Parallels Desktop 7!
♥ 15% Off Compatible Ink. 10% Off All Others (excludes OEMs). Free Shipping over $55. Coupon: 123BLOSSOM, Expires 6.18.12
♥ Save up to 60% at the Hammacher Schlemmer Special Values Sale-While supplies last.
♥ Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.5 - New! Simply Smarter Speech Recognition
♥ Up to 30% OFF Accessories from Verizon Wireless
♥ Limited Time Offer: Get free ZAGGsmartbuds when you buy a ZAGGsparq!

Comment Feed

41 Comments

1 2 3 Next »

Jason

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 10:51 am · Reply

The user experience for the non geek customers is more important to Apple. Put Flash in the mix and millions of users will blame Apple for performance issues because they don’t know any better.
Kevin

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 10:57 am · Reply

Besides content Apple also sells products, the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad and they want the user to experience a high level of satisfaction. Shoehorning crap desktop code into a mobile device will not enhance the user experience.

Chewing up CPU cycles on a mobile devices kills battery life. The primary reason Apple doesn’t want Flash on iOS is they don’t want their customers calling complaining about their iOS device’s battery dying.
Power user

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 11:12 am · Reply

Adobe sucks and there’s nothing any real user anywhere can say to defend their lazy syagnancy in software development.

The only development Adobe has poured money into for tgr past 10-15 years, consistently, od copy procetion schemes.

Die Adobe .
Power user

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 11:16 am · Reply

Corrections to autocorrections:

Stagnancy

For the past 10-15 years, Is copy protection schemes…
Nightstar

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 11:27 am · Reply

Instead of loading PS try running Premiere or Premiere Elements. A crashing resource hogging nightmare! Compared to Final Cut or the Express version that just works. You worry about the editing of your video not about remembering to save or not to do certain thing that will make Premiere crash.

Which is what any customer wants. They just wants it to work and do what they want.

Will be glad when flash goes the way of the flash bulb.
John

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 11:38 am · Reply

Ahh the old Photoshop launch. Just enough time to go get some coffee!
Xan

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 11:43 am · Reply

BBC iPlayer on iPhone and iPad is *not* a native app. It is a web app which runs in Safari, and has two different versions, one optimised for iPhone/iPod touch, and the other optimised for iPad. There are other versions optimised for desktop, and games consoles. The iPhone and iPad web apps are clever enough to allow themselves to be set as a springboard icon, like many other web apps, which let them start up without the usual Safari web furniture.

If the Android browser is capable of displaying H.264 video then I don’t really see why the Beeb don’t just let Android use the iPhone version. I suspect the reason is down to the differing screen sizes and capabilities of Android devices.
Macaday

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 11:51 am · Reply

As a photographer, I barely touch Photoshop anymore, or any other Adobe product, but I am still amazed at the number of photographers sites out there that are Flash based. Are they all mad or what?
Out To Launch

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 1:15 pm · Reply

“Hey, wanna kill 5 minutes? Launch Photoshop.”

Wanna kill 10 minutes? Launch iTunes.
G4Dualie

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 1:37 pm · Reply

Xan makes a good point.

I find it odd too that Android is stuck with a native app capable of only playing Flash versions of BBC’s content.

Does that mean there is no browser-capable web app that allows Android to view H.264 video? If not, why not?

If there is a native app on Android capable of displaying H.264, why doesn’t the Beeb use such metrics to quantify Android’s use?

tangent>

My PS CS4 launches very quickly, so I can’t imagine what MDN is talking about. There was a time when ALL of Adobe’s applications were dog-slow on launch, but not my CS4.

I timed the launch of PS and the interface is ready in 15 seconds or less. If that is considered too much time, then someone needs to lighten up their schedule!
DJ

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 1:37 pm · Reply

Macaday – what do you use instead of Photoshop?

I mostly use iPhoto for basics, then take selects into Photoshop for resizing, rgb-cmyk, retouching, tweaks, jpg-tif, etc.

I’d happily use something else, so would be interested.

Thanks.
Big Als MBP

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 1:41 pm · Reply

@ Out To Launch,

You really love Windows 7, don’t you.
BananaMoon

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 2:02 pm · Reply

@ Out To Launch

iTunes launch: 3 seconds
Photoshop 12.01 launch: 12 seconds

Model Name: MacBook
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz, 2 cores
Memory: 2 GB

Pretty basic & outdated hardware, as a matter of fact.
Moo

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 2:09 pm · Reply

@Out To Launch;

On my MacBook Air (the lowliest of the low, spec-wise, of all Apple machines- Slowest CPU, GPU and running an iPod HDD), iTunes takes “2 1/2 bounces in the dock” to launch.

I’m calling BS!
Out To Launch

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 2:45 pm · Reply

Chill out, you bunch of goobers: I was exaggerating, of course.

@ Big Als MBP : Love Windows 7? No, but it’s not a bad OS.

@ Moo : You can call it guacamole for all I care.

@ BananaMoon :

I’m usually using an iBook, and it’s definitely not speedy. Or worse yet, an old work PC with a Celeron processor. Now that’s painfully slow.
Murasaki

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 2:48 pm · Reply

OK. Not a Windows defender here, but iTunes DOES take a while to boot on Windows XP machine. I don’t blame Apple though. I suspect M$ is trying to hobble the operation of the application.
acid

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 3:08 pm · Reply

3 years since iPhone 1, and Adobe still can’t make it work smoothly, even with Google support. The only speedy avenue left is let Google have a look at the source code to their proprietary software and see if Google engineers can improve it, but that will be the kiss of death to Adobe’s franchise, because you know Google will just pull a Microsft – copy and make their own free version of the plugin.
Michael Logue

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 3:35 pm · Reply

Thats interesting Out To Launch, I just launched iTunes and it took about 30 seconds.
ken1w

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 3:44 pm · Reply

As I knew would happen, NOT having Flash on iOS devices is becoming an advantage for Apple. Meanwhile, more and more Android devices are going to get bogged down by having to play all of those countless Flash-based ads that pollute the Internet. Even MDN has FIVE of them showing, as I type this post.
Diskgrinder

Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 3:50 pm · Reply

The reason why the beeb allows ios devices is because they check the device playing their video. On an an ios device they don’t have to worry (too much) that the content will be ripped off, circumventing that flash drm they slather over the desktop content. As it stands the android flash player doesn’t have the same layer of lock in. You can find out more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/08/html5_open_standards_and_the_b.html

At least that’s what I garnered from reading the first paragraph and skipping to the end of the comments before posting an uninformed opinion