Flash really isn't able to run on devices slower than 1.5-2GHz and 500MB-1GB of RAM. It uses software rendering most of the time.
So really it is not obsolete, it is stuck in a gap in time that is well known and being taken advantage of. All software rendered animation and interactivity is slow on a device running < 1GHz even html5 content. Anything hardware rendered or accelerated is faster such as native or hardware hooks into canvas.
Adobe should have made flash hardware accelerated (or more hardware accelerated) to not be caught in this pickle in time where mobile is taking off but the hardware is still too slow. When devices get to 2GHz and 1GB memory flash will run fine. By then they should be hardware accelerated to provide a competitive advantage if they are smart.
I like Flash and html5 (<canvas>) and have no preference. Adobe made Flash, Apple made canvas and some key features of html 5 with supporting webkit which they open sourced very wisely. However html5 is still a few years off on web and flash is still a few years off on mobile. What happens next is anyone's game.
The problem is this: After a decade of promoting web standards and wrestling the web from Microsoft's hands, the most significant roadblock between the mobile web and the desktop web is a single 3rd-party plug-in from Adobe. This is a serious problem that Linux users know all too well! It's also a rather depressing problem to have in this, the year 2010.
One solution is to wait around for Adobe to get its act together. A lot of people don't like that solution. The iPhone has been out for three years now, and we've all seen the poor performance of the Android Flash demos, to which apologists cry "but you only have to enable Flash for web sites that really need it!" It's clear that we still have a long time to wait for Adobe; or we can promote Flash alternatives.
The battery argument is weak, at best. If I leave my iPhone's iPod playing for 6 hours, my battery dies. If Flash drains it in 7 hours, there is an outcry about battery life.
My Nexus One runs Flash surprisingly fine/smooth, with a lot less hardware requirements that you argue.
Also, if you didn't notice Flash is hardware accelerated. Just because Apples didn't open up the needed API it wasn't on Mac OS X. Stop blaming Adobe for Apples decision.
Other then that i agree. I've seen a lot of HTML5 demos in the last weeks (on latest chromium betas) and many of them are running slow with low fps. Demos that would've run smooth on Flash several years ago. HTML5 and the JS engines have to come a long way to fully replace Flash.
Running Flash on a Nexus One is the equivalent of running today's flash on a late 90's computer. It is not the speediest thing, that is a limitation of mobile hardware. For small apps sure, for games and pseudo 3d, not so much. Native mobile interfaces and apps will make it looks slow on that hardware range always.
Flash and software rendering get better around 2GHz cpu and 1GB ram. html5 and javascript have the same slowness issues unless someone hardware accelerates <canvas> or WebGL is integrated. Flash dabbled with OpenVG in Flashlite 3 but they could also do more there.
Flash is only partially hardware accelerated. For full screen scaling and the mobile versions of later flash lite and finally 10.1 (although still sparingly). It is a step in the right direction but sad in that Director had that in 2003. Flash was ahead and didn't need to innovate much. Unity3D came along, html5 came along, now they need to.
I have been developing in Flash since version 4 when you could start actually make games with it. I am not an html5 or flash fanboy, I like flash and use both (even silverlight, unity3d et). This is just the reality. There is a hardware gap in time that will be closed in the next few years. Flash is not dead unless Adobe does nothing with it.
So really it is not obsolete, it is stuck in a gap in time that is well known and being taken advantage of. All software rendered animation and interactivity is slow on a device running < 1GHz even html5 content. Anything hardware rendered or accelerated is faster such as native or hardware hooks into canvas.
Adobe should have made flash hardware accelerated (or more hardware accelerated) to not be caught in this pickle in time where mobile is taking off but the hardware is still too slow. When devices get to 2GHz and 1GB memory flash will run fine. By then they should be hardware accelerated to provide a competitive advantage if they are smart.
I like Flash and html5 (<canvas>) and have no preference. Adobe made Flash, Apple made canvas and some key features of html 5 with supporting webkit which they open sourced very wisely. However html5 is still a few years off on web and flash is still a few years off on mobile. What happens next is anyone's game.