Smartbooks have been delayed by Flash issues, says ARM | Hacker News Reader

Smartbooks have been delayed by Flash issues, says ARM

zdnet.co.uk

18 pointsukdm13 comments

With regard to the low uptake of Linux on netbooks, I checked prices on Dell's website about a year ago. In several cases, the same machine cost more with Linux than WinXP. In another case, the Linux netbook was only offered with 8gb of flash storage while the Windows version was available with real hard drives.

They were also hard to find. For reasons I don't understand, they don't simply offer an operating system option when you're custom-configuring the machine. You have to go looking for it.

The same issues won't affect smartbooks.

Yeah, I thought that line was odd. I'm under the impression that people who put linux on netbooks just blow out windows and install Linux over it? Thats what I do anyway.

My first thought was the same as yours, "Well uptake wouldn't be slow if vendors actually offered it!"

Doesn't Dell also have a history of often not bothering with Linux hardware integration in consumer space, i.e. not installing the proper driver etc. for a laptop's integral pointing device?

Let me be the first to say I don't care about Flash. All I want is a Linux-compatible netbook running a standard distro with great battery life, 2+ gigs of RAM, a real hard disk and a standard external monitor port. Hardware-accelerated 3D and 1366x768 built-in screen are pluses.

And, for the Flash thing, I would love if ARM decided to pour some money on Gnash development.

I don't think Gnash fixes anything. The reason why flash is so prominent is that there is no good flash-creator-like program out there that outputs files as HTML5/SVG/AJAX/Javascript. People use Flash because it is the only good way to create animations that work for many people, but with a proper editor, we could eliminate the need for additional addons entirely.

But if Gnash can run anything the Flash "IDE" outputs, then everything works. If enough people start using non-Adobe implementations of Flash, applications will have to be tested against those implementations.

But we both know it wont in the real world. We also know that Adobe will probably change the Flash output slightly in the future, and Gnash will always be a step behind.

It doesn't change the fact that you would be wasting development resources, because you then have duplicate functionality. Why waste resources on developing an addon, which will need to be updated with the browser api's, for many browsers, and optimised, when the browsers themselves already have the functionality built in? If resources are spent optimising the browsers themselves rather than a foreign addon, every website benefits.

Fact is, the same problem's we've had with flash addon in the past (such as in cases where updating the browser caused crashes), will still exist in Gnash player instead.

Why are you so eager to encourage people to duplicate functionality browsers are building into their core code these days?

You can either improve the browser, or you can improve Gnash. Both are open source. Unless there is something the flash standard can do which open standards couldn't?

There are lots of applications, in embedded devices, that are built with Flash and target Gnash instead of the Adobe runtime.

Gnash is reasonably good and supports hardware-acceleration. I agree we should move over to HTML5 as soon as possible (taking encumbered codecs in consideration), but some flash support is a nice to have, even if it's not full support.

It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that ARM is competing against the faster atom processors, which can run windows and a lot more applications? I would have thought that consumers would see an Atom netbook, compare it to ARM, realise the minimal cost difference and then settle on the Atom based one.

It sounds like they are simply fishing for excuses honestly. Flash may make ARM netbook's more appealing, but if this was the sole reason that they were delayed, the companies interested in creating smartbooks would have simply released the products now, and introduced a flash update later.

I think it probably has more to do with lack of demand. Whilst the ARM processors are good mobile phone CPU's, for laptops/netbooks, it is simply a trade-off of compatibility for slightly lower cost, and it would have to be a significant reduction in cost for salespeople to recommend a foreign processor.

That's just my opinion though. Personally, I used to sell laptops, and I would much rather push Atom netbooks than ARM netbooks.

I would argue that the smartphone market (and indeed any non-standard desktop OS or hardware) was also held up by lack of Flash support.

You have Intel executives banging on about "the whole internet" or the "real internet" etc. in other words don't buy that (or invest money in offering them for sale) as they don't run Flash. That was their one big talking point against ARM. They even slagged off the iPhone for this despite Apple being a big customer of theirs in other areas.

Intel Blasts iPhone: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10072779-37.html

ZeroGravitas. Apple also banged on in 2004 about how awesome PowerPC was compared to Intel. Remind me what happened 2 years later? Yes, companies do slag others off..

The smartphone market was held up for many other reasons too. It mostly came down to the fact that the mobile OS's sucked at the time. One would have also expected Android/iPhone sales to have been flat without flash support, and this is untrue (Apple have said they refuse to support Flash, and iPhones are unfortunately flying off the shelves).

If you think Flash will suddenly replace the fact that software support for ARM is limited, that the CPU's are slow (and only recently started operating at good enough speeds) and that no major OS's even support ARM (Windows, Ubuntu, redhat, many other major linux distro's) then you should perhaps list EXACTLY what you think consumers need flash for (youtube perhaps would have been one valid reason, but it has been accessible via other means since at least 2006 now).

Whilst technologies such as Flash and ActiveX do still have their uses (hopefully though HTML5 will kill flash), I doubt that the lack of flash would have influenced any manufacturers into delaying an ARM product (which would be slightly cheaper), if they were serious.

Lets face it, The major issues with the iPhone 2G was the lack of applications (and even a javascript refreshing security camera stream caused safari to crash) and on Windows Mobile it was general usability issues. Or do you think these problems would have magically disappeared because of a really-slow version of Flash?

If there's X things that make a market look unlikely to succeed and so prevent investment, then things are going to develop even slower if it's X+1 instead. Poor Flash support is just one more thing that hampered smartphones, just as it hampered Linux. I'm not saying either were perfect if you ignore Flash support.

My point with Intel is that they're going to choose the very worst aspects of their competitors to talk about. If ARM phones could kill your pets, or explode in your face, then Intel would be talking about that. The fact that they were talking about Flash support means that it must have been, in their opinion, one of the biggest weaknesses of ARM in the smartphone space.

The iPhone's 3.1.1 rejection of CS5 is very dangerous to Adobe, because it undermines their platform's relevance. Particularly during a changing of the guard. One response is to ensure their great tools work well for HTML5 (which is probably in their interests anyway); but Flash remains valuable and worth protecting. IMO, they now have an extremely strong motivation to make Flash work on ARM.

Wonder what's stopping them?

I agree with the article that ARM smartbooks need the whole web, since they are competing with the near-universal applications on the x86 platform. But maybe even that isn't enough, since the network is intrinsically slow and unreliable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Comput... and consider the demand for iPhone native apps.

Perhaps faster javascript and RIA will fix this, enabling "native" webapps.

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