Rest in peace, Adobe Media Player... you will not be missed
After today, Adobe Media Player won't be available for download from Adobe's site. Adobe Media Player was a solution looking for a problem, so I'm not surprised to see that today will be the player's last day.
Sometimes great ideas are looking to solve a problem that does not exist. Adobe's Media Player falls into this category. At one time, someone at Adobe must have thought, "Hey, if video in a web page is great, why not create a Flash application using our own AIR technology so that you can collect and manage your videos without the web browser cluttering up the screen?"
Thus was born Adobe Media Player -- an AIR app that runs on Windows and Mac. But Media Player ran into a fundamental problem: most people generally use a web browser to find video content. If you like the video you find, you bookmark it, embed it or post it to Facebook. There is no need for any other software. You're certainly not going to fire up an app that's hard to use, makes it difficult to find content and doesn't make it easy for you to share content.
Adobe Media Player: it was fun, it was real, but it was not real fun.
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After today, Adobe Media Player won't be available for download from Adobe's site. Adobe Media Player was a solution looking for a problem,...
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I remember when this bloatware showed up. I had to read the name three times... Windows Media Player? What? Adobe what?
Adobe Media Player!?
I kept looking for the Windows logo...
I tried to open some flv files the other day and I hadn't realized that Adobe Media Player was the default application for FLV files, NOT VLC as I had thought. I quickly changed my default and binned that Adobe crap.
December 15 2010 at 11:51 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThere was one actual use case for this app. If you were using the adobe flash encoder to rip a movie into flash format, and wanted to watch it BEFORE uploading it into a webpage, to make sure it worked, and that all the settings were as desired, it could do that very well (after you figured out the terrible interface).
That being said it was an awful application.
Adobe Media Player uses the same technology as the Hulu standalone application - both are Adobe AIR apps. The difference is that Hulu is easier to use and directed at consumers. AMP had the crazy notion of who their consumer would be and tried to ink deals with broadcasters to supply content driven by commercials (Flash video has programmable cues that can trigger advertisements - or whatever else you want). Adobe was holding in their hands the bright future of video via the internet and they didn't know what to do with it. Just like Adobe could have introduced a mobile phone operating system based on AIR rather than shoving Flash onto Android. In many ways Steve Jobs is right that Adobe has lost its creative edge.
December 15 2010 at 8:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHulu is not an AIR app.
It is a standalone app developed in flash and distributed in OS specific containers, not a cross OS container like AIR.
The distinction, while minor, is still important, because it doesn't require AIR to run.
you sound pretty confident. maybe you should list TUAW's past contradictions - go ahead, google it and link 'em. we'll wait.
or maybe your assumptions lead nowhere.
stop coddling adobe.
Hm, I think this is the very first time that I ever heard of this thing - which can be taken as a sign of how unnecessary the AMP was. RIP, Adobe Media Player, no one knew you, no one will miss you.
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