ADOBE IS F* USELESS

Question

ok, no doubt people will say, Adobe is not useless, Flash
player 9 is coming soon? How can you say that?
Linux flash player is still on version 7, I have emailed
support, used the best language i could think of, asked nicely,
used the forums, pm'd people and after a year, NOTHING ... and
where is flash player 8 or 9 for linux? no where!!
Now, before you get all randy on my *** ... just keep in mind
that i'm talking about a little flash player ... not MX Studio ...
if Adobe has trouble porting a proper version of Flash player ...
##snip##
Riann,
I cannot provide any information on Flash Player 9 for Linux
until there is a public announcement. Sorry.
Bentley Wolfe
Senior Support Engineer, Flash/Flash Player
Adobe
##snip##
Why NOT? I'm playing unreal tournament, quake4, i use picasa,
google earth, blender, eclipse, firefox, thunderbird, open office
ALL of them are cross platform compatible, even, Acrobat Reader so
WTF wrong with Flash?
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=184&threadid=1168321

Answer 1

> Jekyl, I have no problem with you. I don't want to fight
with you or
> anyone for
> that matter, all i'm looking for is for Adobe, to keep
their versions up
> to
> date, across all platforms ... though i can view most
flash sites, a lot
> of
> them are now being done in flash 8, which I nor anyone
else using flash
> player
> can view.
I can understand your frustration. If anything, any fault
lies with the
original authors of Flash Player who did not write the code
in a way that
was easily ported. Also is that the code is optimized (and
optimized code
is always hard to port to other platforms). That meant that
the port of FP8
would take significant time and resource .. time and
resources the
Macromedia needed to devote to its next generation FP9 (that
support the
much better scripting engine etc that is required for Flex 2
to work). So
either Flex 2 (and the revenue that brings in) is delayed for
the sake of a
Linux port of the player (which brings in no revenue at
all).. or the Linux
port is done after FP9. They chose the latter (a sensible
business
decision). But (assuming they have learnt their lesson) the
new FP9 stuff
should be written in a way that is easier to port to other
platforms .. so
hopefully the Linux port of FP9 will be quicker than it would
have been for
FP8 (especially 64-bit platforms).
> There is a simple solution to this, just specify release
dates, and time
> lines!
Macromedia (now adobe) has never announced relase times. If
they do that,
then if there is a problem, pepoole start suing, because they
made business
plans based on announced release dates etc.
When a release date is known, then Adboe will announce it.
Until the
product gets ot the stage when a firm release date can be
made public, it
won't be anounced.
People can speculate and demand and whinge and complain all
they want.
Adboe/Macroemdia will simply not announce things until it is
the right tim
to announce them. that is simple business sense.
> Geese dude, so now I want to create some flash
animations, I can't because
> i
> have to now install windows, just for that!? so my
email, my music, all my
> other web dev apps are stuck in linux ... can you
understand my
> frustration?
Yes .. I understand it. But posts like "ADOBE IS F* USELESS"
don't really
help (guess they just make you feel better for venting
though)
> Also, you cannot just say ... linux is minority so screw
them,
I didn't say that. But as a company, Adboe/Macroemdia have to
make sensible
and responsible business decisions .. in this case it means
the smaller
linux market has a delay in updates, but allows the much
larger window/max
market to update to the new player sooner, and for Adboe to
get its new
flash2 platform out sooner.
> cause dude,
> what about people in wheel chairs, do we just say screw
them, let's just
> build
> stairs all teh way! not that people using linux are
disadvandtaged, but
> i'm
> just making a point about minorities ...
Well .. if we make this a fair analogy and say that 'able
bodied' people are
not able to use ramps (ie windows users cannot use a linux
player) .. and if
we assume that ramps take much longer to build than stairs
... then if you
have people waiting to get into your wonderful new building,
and you make
everyone wait until there are BOTH ramps and stairs (instead
of installing
stairs for the majority first and then putting in the ramps
afterwards ..
then you can see the logic.
> If they can port acrobat reader to linux, surely they
can port a 997 K
> flash
> player?
The effort to port depends on a lot more than the nubmer of
bytes of code ..
thats a very naive conclusion
> Dude, no matter what Operating System you use, you have
to agree that
> this is ridiculas ... heck I'm not asking for much ...
No .. its not ridiculous .. but it is frustrating for you
(and other Linux
users).
But then (I know you won't like hearing this) .. if you do
choose (or are
forced to use) a minority platform like Linux (no matter how
much better it
may be), then the price you have to pay is less range of
applications and
delays in porting. If you want the widest range of software
available
off-the-shelf and sooner (rather than later) ... then you
should choose
Windows as your O/S. Of course, doing so may mean you'd be
sacrificing
things like open source, better security etc etc .. but then
that is part of
the decision you need to make when you choose a platform ..
you can't have
you cake and eat it too (as they say)
Jeckyl