Comments on: We all love this Olympics, right? Not Adobe

How on earth could Adobe blow its big shot at the gold? The company's second place finish to Microsoft is a boon for Silverlight just when it's most needed.

[JamesSF]

NBC should've stuck with Flash. I can't get Silverlight to work on my Mac...

[Ilgaz]

In fact, they demonstrated the planet what happens when you go with 90s mind getting software from Microsoft which codes just to make sure only people using their OS will be happy.
They aren't even aware that they are missing the entire portable market by not using a secured mp4/3G/real system. I am sure they have never heard about it either!

[onlyauser]

I am a long time Adobe user. Adobe has produced my most important tools for two decades. Adobe made a terrible mistake here IMHO. Everything was Adobe's and has been Adobe's to lose for awhile. Now that Adobe has allowed such a spectacular entrance by Microsoft into their competitive sphere of dominance the opportunity has been blown wide open for all comers and Adobe Flash has been instantly marginalized. OOPS!

[mrguard]

hey, i cannot watch olympics even though I have silverlight 2.0 beta installed on my Win2k work machine..they support IE / Firefox on WinXP onwards..crazy!

[cp256]

Silverspam won't install on Win2k with FF 2.0.0.16, too bad, so sad. Don't like M$, don't like NBC and I don't like their China cheerleading staff either. I never liked Abloatme either and flash is just a spam magnet. I will control when video plays on my computers, nobody else.

For the record, I have a QX9650 with Vista64 and several XP boxes, but I still prefer my comfortable old overclocked win2k box for general browsing and daily work ssh access to my unix boxen.

[starflyer88]

Wow - CNET reports Microsoft doing something well, and the forum lights up with indignant protest. Who'dve thunk it?

Yawn. You heckling fanboys are really just boring. 25 million videos watched? Linux, G5, etc. etc. Do you all even know what an insignificant slice of the world you represent?

Silverlight is good, the Olympic coverage has been good. Most people have benefited from being freed from network coverage and their drivelling commentary. Can't you all just suck it in and admit that this has just worked? Would it really harm you?

[The_Decider]

It didn't work.

They could have used something else and been able to include everyone, and Silverlight will be relagated to the trash heap after the Olympics are over.

Silverlight-a solution in search of a problem.

[Ilgaz]

Flash has become some kind of standard that FSF/GNU would be happy if Adobe completely open sources it just like Java.
Your favourite company can't even support PowerPC OS X. That is right, they can't code PowerPC!
God help the fools who falls into such PR tricks and abandon Flash. We are not speaking about "Windows and Mac" anymore, in 1-2 years, people will use 3-5 different operating systems and CPUs without even knowing about them! It is the "ubiquitous" computing becoming true.

[Ilgaz]

"Linux, G5, etc. etc. Do you all even know what an insignificant slice of the world you represent?"
A co-incidence, companies thinking supporting multiple platforms or minorities are not relevant has become irrelevant after dotcom boom.
Do you have any clue about the opportunities if NBC used standard video? For example, where is Silverlight for Symbian or iPhone? They can play mp4/h264 all fine. Just an example.

[Kwasiowusu]

Watched lots of Olympic videos on nbcOlympics.com site using silverlight. The experience has been just wonderful.
Adobe Flash? what is that?
We don't need no steeeenking Flash.

[JuggerNaut]

Microsoft will never beat Adobe in this space, and it doesn't matter how many Olympics (or TV networks) they buy. Microsoft has never been good at web-based technologies or even at cross-platform compatibility. I mean, look at Microsoft Office for Windows and Mac; they're only about 1/2 compatible on some of the file formats and forget about documents and spreadsheets with macros.

Silverlight is a poor imitation of Flash that cannot deliver the same end user experience, PERIOD! If it's on the web and it's not truly cross-platform compatible, then it's not worth it!!

[jjohnson2008]

silver light maybe good even in its current "beta" version, but nbc does not provide real time LIVE video. so, why use silverlight anyway.

[Ilgaz]

They don't or they can't provide? Do you think Silverlight can scale 10M+ viewers watching live stream?
I know who can scale.. Quicktime server and Real server or VLC.
People saying "real is spyware" should read Silverlight EULA very closely. They have some VERY interesting things there.

[Ilgaz]

Flash 10 with multi core (not just 2, 4/8) support along with some serious, real life performance optimisation gained "release candidate" status.
Do you know that Silverlight abandoned PowerPC mac users just at version 2?
CNET, are you aware that CBS , a multi billion healthy media company purchased you and you don't need these stories anymore? Let me remind just in case!

[Good_Reverend_Gibbs]

Lots of Mac users post on these forums. Don't take anyone's comments as truth (including mine), try things for yourself and learn what hype is deserved and who needs to just be quiet.